ENG 695 Spring 2007

Semester Review: Medieval and Early Modern Rhetoric

General Content Review

See also April 26 notes from class

Things you should know about the Classical Roots of rhetoric and discourse

• The main figures who impacted the formation of rhetorical theory and practice, and its transmission, and their important contributions

• The “Four Ancient Traditions of Discourse” and their main components

Things you should know about the changes in discourse theory and practice in the Transitional Period and Early Middle Ages (or “Dark Ages”)

• The reason for the change in cultural and discourse norms

• Most important figures in the transitional period/early middle ages and their contributions: The Encyclopedists (Martianus Capella, Cassiodorus, Isadore of Seville); Boethius; Donatus and Priscian; St. Augustine, Pope Gregory the Great, Rabanus Maurus

Things you should know about the changes in discourse theory and practice in the Later Middle Ages (or “High Middle Ages”)

 begin

• What was the nature of the major classical traditions that continued into this period: the Aristotelian and Ciceronian?

• What were the main features, and who were the two or three most important writers, of the medieval developments in the discourse arts: the ars praedicandi, the ars dictaminis, and the ars poetriae?

Things you should know about discourse theory and practice in the Early Modern (or “Renaissance”) period up to about 1600

• What factors led to the “recovery” of classical learning in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries? Which major classical rhetorical texts were recovered in complete form?

• What was Humanism and who were important early Humanists?

• What were important contributions of Erasmus to rhetoric and education in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries?

• Why are the main features of Peter Ramus’s “reform” of  discourse theory and teaching?

• What are the focal concepts of Francis Bacon’s view of rhetoric?