Naissance du cicéronianisme et émergence de l’humanisme comme culture dominante : réflexions pour une étude de la rhétorique humaniste comme pratique sociale

Author: Revest, Clémence
Title: Naissance du cicéronianisme et émergence de l’humanisme comme culture dominante : réflexions pour une étude de la rhétorique humaniste comme pratique sociale
Review/Collection: "Mélanges de l’École française de Rome – Moyen Âge", 125, 1
Place edition: Roma
Editor: École française de Rome
Year edition: 2013
Pages: 219-257
Keywords: Éloquence - Eloquenza - Eloquence, Héritage - Fortuna - Legacy, Rhétorique - Retorica - Rhetorics, Stylistique et genres littéraires - Stilistica e generi letterari - Stylistics and literary genre
Description: [Abstract This paper focuses on the development and the dissemination of Ciceronianism in Italy in the first half of the fifteenth century, not as much as a doctrine than as a characteristic pratice of writing, evidenced through the many humanists orationes that are preserved. The empirical study of the emergence of the so-called « classicist » oratory is a remarkably significant area of investigation, in order to analyze the expansion of the cultural model of the studia humanitatis. It was indeed both a trivialized tool of social distinction and a vector of institutional and ideological penetration. Three main research tracks are proposed. The first is the creation and the circulation of a common repertory through the multitude of manuscript compilations, generally referred to as « humanistic miscellanies », which normalized practice through practicing. The second is the concrete shaping of an oratorial matrix « in the manner of Cicero ». It can be generally described (stylistic effects and argumentative processes), while measuring the gap created between this matrix and the medieval traditions of Latin rhetoric. The third is the movement of infiltration of ciceronian practice into a variety of rhetorical spheres (such as preaching, diplomatic epistolography or academic ritual) by a more or less successful formal acclimatization. This infiltration also tended to introduce some topical constructions, that produced « common places » between socio-political institutions and humanistic culture. Two manuscripts are inventoried in the annex : the manuscript of Venice, Biblioteca Marciana, Lat. XI. 101 (3939) and the manuscript of the Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ottob. Lat. 3021.
Works:
Link: http://mefrm.revues.org/1192
Author initials: Revest 2013