Emotion and the History of Rhetoric in the Middle Ages (Oxford Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture)

Rhetoric is an engine of social discourse and the art charged with generating and swaying emotion. The history of rhetoric provides a continuous structure by which we can measure how emotions were understood, articulated, and mobilized under various historical circumstances and social contracts. This book is about how rhetoric in the West, from Late Antiquity to the later Middle Ages, represented the role of emotion in shaping persuasions. It is the first book-length study of medieval rhetoric and the emotions, coloring that rhetorical history between about 600 CE and the cusp of early modernity. Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, as in other periods, constituted the gateway training for anyone engaged in emotionally persuasive writing. Medieval rhetorical thought on emotion has multiple strands of influence and sedimentations of practice. The earliest and most persistent tradition treated emotional persuasion as a property of surface stylistic effect, which can be seen in the medieval rhetorics of poetry and prose, and in literary production. But the impact of Aristotelian rhetoric, which reached the Latin West in the thirteenth century, gave emotional persuasion a core role in reasoning, incorporating it into the key device of proof, the enthymeme. In Aristotle, medieval teachers and writers found a new rhetorical language to explain the social and psychological factors that affect an audience. With Aristotelian rhetoric, the emotions became political. The impact of Aristotle's rhetorical approach to emotions was to be felt in medieval political treatises, in poetry, and in preaching. Cover 1 Emotion and the History of Rhetoric in the Middle Ages 4 Copyright 5 OXFORD STUDIES IN MEDIEVALLITERATURE AND CULTURE 6 Dedication 8 Acknowledgments 10 Contents 14 List of Abbreviations 16 Introduction 18 1: Before the Middle Ages: Emotion from Invention to Style 39 1.1 Affectio in the Tradition of the De inventione: Rhetorical Reasoning and Moral Philosophy 41 1.2 Pity and Indignation in the Tradition of De inventione 53 1.3 Masters of Style in Late Antiquity 64 2: Christian and Literary Rhetorics of the Early Middle Ages: Emotion as the Property of Style 75 2.1 Augustine’s De doctrina christiana Book 4 76 2.2 Macrobius’ Saturnalia: Inculcating Love for Virgil 86 2.3 Cassiodorus’ Expositio psalmorum: Shared Affection for the Psalms 91 2.4 From Isidore to Bede: Regression and Internalization 102 2.5 Ambiguous Impact: Onulf of Speyer 113 3: Emotion in the Rhetorical Arts and Literary Culture c.1070–c.1400 121 3.1 Teaching Emotional Style in the Arts of Poetry and Prose c.1070–c.1215 129 3.2 Anthologies of Style: Love Letters and Poetry 151 3.3 Literary Impact: Chaucer, Petrarch, Chaucer 164 4: Aristotle’s Rhetoric in the Latin West: The Fortunes of the Pathē 173 4.1 Pathos and Enthymeme in Aristotle’s Rhetoric 175 4.2 The Fortunes of the Rhetoric in Context: Ancient Philosophies of the Passions 186 4.3 Al-Farabi,Avicenna, and Averroes on Emotion in the Rhetoric 192 4.4 The Latin Rhetoric and Its Reception: Moral Philosophy and Giles of Rome’s Commentary 199 4.5 Giles’ Commentary in Context: The Rhetoric and Medieval Philosophies of the Passions 211 5: De regimine principum: Emotion, Persuasion, and Political Thought 220 5.1 Figuralis et grossus 225 5.2 A Political Rhetoric of the Emotions 232 5.3 Enthymematic Reasoning 244 6: Political Poetics and the Aristotelian Turn: Dante, Chaucer, and Hoccleve 258 6.1 The Poetry of Enthymeme in the Convivio 260 6.2 Enthymematic Oratory in the Knight’s Tale 278 6.3 Emotion and Political Argument in Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes 291 7: Preaching, Emotion, and the Aristotelian Turn 302 7.1 The Rhetoric and De regimine principum in Clerical Hands 304 7.2 Emotional Appeals and the Arts of Preaching 314 7.3 Two Readers of the Rhetoric: Engelbert of Admont and Mathias of Linköping 319 7.4 Piers the Plowman Meets the Rhetoric: Pastoral Readers and Emotion 341 8: Epilogue Mixed Rhetorics 356 Bibliography 386 1. Primary Sources 386 2. Secondary Sources 394 Index of Historical Persons and Titles of Works 422 General Index 428 "Rhetoric is an engine of social discourse and the art charged with generating and swaying emotion. The history of rhetoric provides a continuous structure by which we can measure how emotions were understood, articulated, and mobilized under various historical circumstances and social contracts. This book is about how rhetoric in the West from Late Antiquity to the later Middle Ages represented the role of emotion in shaping persuasions. It is the first book-length study of medieval rhetoric and the emotions, coloring in what has largely been a blank space between about 600 CE and the cusp of early modernity. Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, as in other periods, constituted the gateway training for anyone engaged in emotionally persuasive writing. Medieval rhetorical thought on emotion has multiple strands of influence and sedimentations of practice. The earliest and most persistent tradition treated emotional persuasion as a property of surface stylistic effect, which can be seen in the medieval rhetorics of poetry and prose, and in literary production. But the impact of Aristotelian rhetoric, which reached the Latin West in the thirteenth century, gave emotional persuasion a core role in reasoning, incorporating it into the key device of proof, the enthymeme. In Aristotle, medieval teachers and writers found a new rhetorical language to explain the social and psychological factors that affect an audience. With Aristotelian rhetoric, the emotions became political. The impact of Aristotle's rhetorical approach to emotions was to be felt in medieval political treatises, in poetry, and in preaching."-- Publisher website