Rhetoric as Poetic
Humanist Fiction in the Renaissance
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 16007347 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Arthur F Kinney (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1976 |
| Volume | 43 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 413-413 |
| Publication date | 1976-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | ELH (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-8304 • E-ISSN: 1080-6547 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2872730 |
| OpenAlex | W2315862548 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
Immortal gods! said Catullus, what a variety of things, Crassus, you have embraced! what force, what abundance! and from what poverty have you dared to lead the orator forth and establish him in the kingdom of his fathers! The author is Cicero, the work the conclusion of the De Oratore (III.xxxii.126); and the tribute follows Cicero's careful delineation of eloquence as dependent on clear distinctions, lucid ordering, sufficient amplitude, and a deliberate choice of matter and manner, the whole enabling the rhetoricians to weave from language something approaching the spell of poetry: in ipsa oratione quasi quemdam numerum versumque conficiunt-id est quod dico ornate (III.xiv.53).1 We do not know now if Petrarch had this particular passage in mind or not when he praised rhetoric rather than theology as the queen of the arts2-surely Cicero was his favorite next to the Bible of all the great texts of the past-but his accolade was not less firm; eloquence, he remarks, is the proper expression of virtus (naturall excellence). Petrarch nominated rhetoric as the fundamental means to wisdom; similar to our own corrupted sense of virtu, Petrarch made of eloquence its own reward. Petrarch's endorsement of Cicero is, in very real ways, both the beginning of humanism and the beginning of the Renaissance, the eloquence of the Romans in constellation with the philosophy of the Greeks and Holy Scriptures. The respect paid Roman oratory by all the humanists early and late is rehearsed by Jean Luis Vives. Rhetoric, Vives tells us in De Tradendis Disciplinis (1516)
Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Humanism · Literature · Poetry · Rhetoric · The Renaissance · Theology · Philosophy · Renaissance and Early Modern Studies
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,18 |
| Citation span | 2009 - 2025 (17) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |