Historical Rhetorics/Rhetoric's Medieval Resurgence

Chapter Eight: Rhetoric's Medieval Resurgence (?)

The title for this week isn't a statement it is a question. Do what extent does Augustine promote rhetoric? The answer to this question, I believe, will be imbricated in the Q Question, to whether rhetoric refers to a reality and transmits Truths already in existence or instantiates reality and transforms our experience of it.

St. Augustine. On Christian Teaching. Trans. and Intro R.P.H. Green. New York, NY: Oxford UP, 1999.

Relevant Secondary Sources

• Anderson, Floyd D. "De Doctrina Christiana 2.18.28: The Convergence of Athens and Jerusalem." Rhetoric Society Quarterly 15.3-4 (1985): 102-105.
• Erickson, Keith V. "The Significance of Doctrina in Augustine's De Doctrina Christiana. Rhetoric Society Quarterly 15.3-4 (1985): 105-108.

• Friedman, Alice T. "The Influence of Humanism on the Education of Girls and Boys in Tudor England." History of Education Quarterly 25.1-2 (1985): 57-70.
• Fulkerson, Gerald. "Augustine's Attitude Toward Rhetoric in 'De Doctrina Christiana': the Significance of 2.37.55." Rhetoric Society Quarterly. 15.3/4 (1985): 108-111.]]
• Johnson, W. R. “Isocrates Flowering: The Rhetoric of Augustine.” Philosophy & Rhetoric (1976): 217–31.
  • If Augustine mainly emphasizes theory, he has the characteristics of a philosopher; if he has more concern with practice, he will side with rhetoricians.
  • Once Augustine converted to Christianity, his preoccupation shifted to doing the work of the Church; he no longer had time for his own personal indulgence in philosophy.
  • In order to convince an audience which was not present, Isocrates learned “to create on paper a figure whose being is totally defined by the passion, the energies, and the logic of his will” (225). This distillation of personality into will allows the rhetor to exert influence through time and space. Like Isocrates, and later Cicero, Augustine believes that rhetoric’s only worthy goal is to effect action in the audience.
• King, Andrew A. "St. Augustine's Doctrine of Participation As a Metaphysic of Persuasion." Rhetoric Society Quarterly 15.3-4 (1985):112-116.
• Mazzeo, Joseph Anthony. "St. Augustine's Rhetoric of Silence." Journal of the History of Ideas 23 (1962): 175–96.
• Nauert, Charles G., Jr. "The Clash of Humanists and Scholastics: An Approach to Pre-Reformation Controversies." The Sixteenth Century Journal 4.1 (1973): 1-18.
• Schaeffer, John D. “The Dialectic of Orality and Literacy: The Case of Book 4 of Augustine’s De doctrina christiana.” PMLA 111.5 (October 1996): 1133-1145.
  • Schaeffer’s argument centers on his discussion of the important role of orality in Augustine’s treatise: “If book 4 of the De doctrina is read as advice on how to deliver an extemporaneous sermon, Augustine’s recommendations suggest that he is not simply opposing classical rhetoric: he is…returning to the orally based rhetoric of republican Rome, which he is adapting to a textually based religion attended by an emerging sense of interiority” (1134).
  • Schaeffer suggests that those who see “orality and literacy as a binary opposition” have missed the point of De doctrina’s book 4: “Book 4 makes more sense read according to an ‘ideological’ model…as a product of social institutions that support and incorporate a mixture of orality and literacy” (1135).
  • He argues that the low literacy rates of late antiquity equate to an emphasis on orality over textuality but also reveal important connections between orality and the texts being performed. In fact, he says, “every text involved a performance" (1136). This does not mean, however, that the texts themselves are unimportant, for “the predominance of oral performance…must not obscure the fact that these performances were of and about written texts” (1136).
  • The same interiority that produces wisdom produces prayer that is at once formulaic, rhetorical, and sincere; it is at once text (read: Scripture) based and extemporaneous, just like the kind of rhetorical oratory Augustine encourages throughout book 4 (1139).
• Seigel, JE. ""Civic Humanism" or Ciceronian Rhetoric? The Culture of Petrarch and Bruni." Past and Present 34 (1966): 3-48.
• Stuever, Nancy. "Petrarch's Invective contra medicum: An Early Confrontation of Rhetoric and Medicine." MLN 108.4 (1993) 659-679.
• Tell, David. "Beyond Mnemotechnics: Confession and Memory in Augustine." Philosophy & Rhetoric 39.3 (2006): 233-253.
• Vickers, Brian. "The Recovery of Rhetoric: Petrarch, Eramsus, Perelman." History of the Human Sciences 3.3 (1990): 415-441.
• Wertheimer, Molly, ed. “Panel on the Most Significant Passage in Saint Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana: Five Nominations.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 15.3–4 (1985): 101–18.
• Wiethoff, William E. "The Merits of De Doctrina Christiana." Rhetoric Society Quarterly 15.3-4 (1985): 116-119.

Professors Kristine Johnson, Kilian McCurrie, and Jeff Ringer have compiled a bibliography dedicated to "The History of Rhetoric and Christian Tradition" [.doc]