Author: Camargo, Martin
Title: Latin Composition Textbooks and Ad Herennium Glossing: The Missing Link?
Review/Collection: in: Cox, V. & Ward, J. O. (Ed.), The Rhetoric of Cicero in its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition (Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 2)
Place edition: Leiden-Boston
Editor: Brill
Year edition: 2006
Pages: 267-288
Keywords: Héritage - Fortuna - Legacy, Philologie - Filologia - Philology, Rhétorique - Retorica - Rhetorics
Description: It is difficult to determine whether the Roman rhetorics also served as primary textbooks for teaching the medieval equivalent of the declamations and other ancient school exercises, and, if the actual texts were used to teach Latin composition, what role was played by commentaries and glosses in adapting them for such teaching.
As a step toward answering these questions, I will show that both the original treatises and the apparatus that accompanied them in medieval manuscript copies continued to be consulted by medieval composition teachers long after the medieval textbooks that drew much of their basic doctrines from them had developed into distinct and well-established genres. There is considerable, mostly unstudied, evidence of cross-fertilization between the editing, glossing, and commenting of the Ciceronian texts and the production of new textbooks from their origins in the late eleventh century until the emergence of new varieties of textbook in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
In other words, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, excerpts from the arts of poetry and prose were just as likely to appear in glosses to the Rhetorica ad Herennium as excerpts from the Rhetorica ad Herennium in the arts of poetry and prose. By way of suggesting that the classical rhetorics played a more active role in the medieval composition classroom than has been assumed, even if the precise nature of that role remains obscure, I propose to trace this reciprocal influence in two areas of doctrine, the rhetorical figures and the attributes of persons and actions; Preserved in hundreds of manuscript copies, the De inventione and Rhetorica ad Herennium clearly occupied an important place in medieval culture. Thanks especially to the scholarship of John Ward, we are beginning to appreciate the broad range of practical needs served by the Ciceronian technical rhetorics during the Middle Ages. One would think that the most obvious use to which they might have been put would have been the one for which they were originally intended: that is, to help schoolboys learn the rudiments of rhetorical composition and, in the case of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, performance. However, most studies of medieval composition teaching characterize the De inventione and especially the Rhetorica ad Herennium as something like ‘organ donors’ for medieval textbooks rather than as composition textbooks in their own right. They certainly provided key pieces of doctrine for the medieval arts of composition, both the more specialized arts of letter writing and the more general arts of poetry and prose, that began to appear in the late eleventh century. Much more difficult to determine is whether the Roman rhetorics also served as primary textbooks for teaching the medieval equivalent of the declamations and other ancient school exercises, and, ifthe actual texts were used to teach Latin composition, what role was played by commentaries and glosses in adapting them for such teaching [Author].
Works:
Link: http://www.brill.nl/rhetoric-cicero-its-medieval-and-early-renaissance-commentary-tradition
Author initials: Camargo 2006
Title: Latin Composition Textbooks and Ad Herennium Glossing: The Missing Link?
Review/Collection: in: Cox, V. & Ward, J. O. (Ed.), The Rhetoric of Cicero in its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition (Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 2)
Place edition: Leiden-Boston
Editor: Brill
Year edition: 2006
Pages: 267-288
Keywords: Héritage - Fortuna - Legacy, Philologie - Filologia - Philology, Rhétorique - Retorica - Rhetorics
Description: It is difficult to determine whether the Roman rhetorics also served as primary textbooks for teaching the medieval equivalent of the declamations and other ancient school exercises, and, if the actual texts were used to teach Latin composition, what role was played by commentaries and glosses in adapting them for such teaching.
As a step toward answering these questions, I will show that both the original treatises and the apparatus that accompanied them in medieval manuscript copies continued to be consulted by medieval composition teachers long after the medieval textbooks that drew much of their basic doctrines from them had developed into distinct and well-established genres. There is considerable, mostly unstudied, evidence of cross-fertilization between the editing, glossing, and commenting of the Ciceronian texts and the production of new textbooks from their origins in the late eleventh century until the emergence of new varieties of textbook in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
In other words, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, excerpts from the arts of poetry and prose were just as likely to appear in glosses to the Rhetorica ad Herennium as excerpts from the Rhetorica ad Herennium in the arts of poetry and prose. By way of suggesting that the classical rhetorics played a more active role in the medieval composition classroom than has been assumed, even if the precise nature of that role remains obscure, I propose to trace this reciprocal influence in two areas of doctrine, the rhetorical figures and the attributes of persons and actions; Preserved in hundreds of manuscript copies, the De inventione and Rhetorica ad Herennium clearly occupied an important place in medieval culture. Thanks especially to the scholarship of John Ward, we are beginning to appreciate the broad range of practical needs served by the Ciceronian technical rhetorics during the Middle Ages. One would think that the most obvious use to which they might have been put would have been the one for which they were originally intended: that is, to help schoolboys learn the rudiments of rhetorical composition and, in the case of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, performance. However, most studies of medieval composition teaching characterize the De inventione and especially the Rhetorica ad Herennium as something like ‘organ donors’ for medieval textbooks rather than as composition textbooks in their own right. They certainly provided key pieces of doctrine for the medieval arts of composition, both the more specialized arts of letter writing and the more general arts of poetry and prose, that began to appear in the late eleventh century. Much more difficult to determine is whether the Roman rhetorics also served as primary textbooks for teaching the medieval equivalent of the declamations and other ancient school exercises, and, ifthe actual texts were used to teach Latin composition, what role was played by commentaries and glosses in adapting them for such teaching [Author].
Works:
Link: http://www.brill.nl/rhetoric-cicero-its-medieval-and-early-renaissance-commentary-tradition
Author initials: Camargo 2006
