Reading Between the Lines: The Textual History and Manuscript Transmission of Cicero’s Rhetorical Works

Auteur: Taylor-Briggs, Ruth
Titre: Reading Between the Lines: The Textual History and Manuscript Transmission of Cicero’s Rhetorical Works
Revue/Collection: In: Virginia Cox and John Ward, The Rhetoric of Cicero in its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition, Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition, Volume: 2
Lieu èdition: Leiden
Éditeur: Brill
Annèe edition: 2006
Pages: 77-108
Mots-clès: Héritage - Fortuna - Legacy, Philologie - Filologia - Philology
Description: The textual history and manuscript transmission of Cicero’s rhetorical works is not a homogeneous affair. With no respect for Cicero’s own evaluation of the relative merits of his rhetorical corpus, the late antique and medieval worlds seem to have placed much greater value on his so-called juvenilia, i.e. the Ad Herennium and the De inventione, than on those of the more mature works, the De oratore, Orator, Brutus, and related works. The greater use and influence of the Ad Herennium and De inventione is indeed immediately evident from the sheer volume of the medieval manuscripts still extant, whereas the mature works circulated at best in small numbers and mutilated form, until the discovery of the Laudensis manuscript in the early part of the fifteenth century. This chapter will review the textual history and manuscript transmission of these two groups of texts, starting with the more popular juvenilia and then moving on to the mature works. Evidence provided by the extant manuscripts of the Ad Herennium allows an extra focus on its pre-history, that is, on the history and transmission of the text in the period before which manuscripts are extant [Abstract].
Oeuvres:
Sigle auteur: Taylor-Briggs 2006