
A History of Renaissance Rhetoric 1380-1620
Peter Mack(Author)
Oxford University Press
Published on 14. July 2011
Book
Hardback
360 pages
978-0-19-959728-4 (ISBN)
Description
This is the first comprehensive History of Renaissance Rhetoric. Rhetoric, a training in writing and delivering speeches, was a fundamental part of renaissance culture and education. It is concerned with a wide range of issues, connected with style, argument, self-presentation, the arousal of emotion, voice and gesture. More than 3,500 works on rhetoric were published in a total of over 15,000 editions between 1460 and 1700. The renaissance was a great age of innovation in rhetorical theory. This book shows how renaissance scholars recovered and circulated classical rhetoric texts, how they absorbed new doctrines from Greek rhetoric, and how they adapted classical rhetorical teaching to fit modern conditions. It traces the development of specialised manuals in letter-writing, sermon composition and style, alongside accounts of the major Latin treatises in the field by Lorenzo Valla, George Trapezuntius, Rudolph Agricola, Erasmus, Philip Melanchthon, Johann Sturm, Juan Luis Vives, Peter Ramus, Cyprien Soarez, Justus Lipsius, Gerard Vossius and many others.
Reviews / Votes
In A History of Renaissance Rhetoric 13801620 Mack makes those important Latin Renaissance rhetoric manuals visible, in the process bringing to our attention some important works in the history of rhetoric ... Peter Mack has done more than anyone to make this important literature available and accessible for our age. * Arthur E. Walzer, Rhetoric Society Quarterly * an ambitious compendium of rhetorical history that brings a broad corpus together ... Mack's book encapsulates many of the essential rhetorical works of the Renaissance, providing insightful and articulate overviews of its primary sources along with convienient groupings to help the novice scholar make sense of these immense and diverse sources. * Amanda J. Gerber, Comitatus * Mack delivers an ambitious history with great acumen, balancing descriptions and readings of discrete works with detailed information about their publication. ... It is a masterful work and an important resource for scholars and students interested in the shapes and capacities of Renaissance humanism and its afterlives. * Russ Leo, Sixteenth Century Journal *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Scholars and students of the history of rhetoric, Renaissance Italian, French, and English literature; Renaissance historians, especially historians of ideas
Illustrations
Two black and white halftones
Dimensions
Height: 222 mm
Width: 154 mm
Thickness: 29 mm
Weight
568 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-959728-4 (9780199597284)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Peter Mack
A History of Renaissance Rhetoric 1380-1620
Book
04/2013
Oxford University Press
€66.85
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Peter Mack
A History of Renaissance Rhetoric 1380-1620
E-Book
07/2011
OUP eBook
€33.99
Available for download
Person
Peter Mack studied at Oxford, the Warburg Institute, University of London, and Rome. He has been editor of the leading international journal Rhetorica and Chair of the English Department and the Arts Faculty at the University of Warwick. From October 2010 he will become Director of the Warburg Institute and Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition. His books include, Renaissance Argument (1993), Elizabethan Rhetoric (2002) and Reading and Rhetoric in Montaigne and Shakespeare (2010).
Author
Director of the Warburg Institute, University of London; Professor of English, University of Warwick
Content
1. Introduction and Origins ; 2. Diffusion and Reception of Classical Rhetoric ; 3. Italy 1390-1480 ; 4. Agricola ; 5. Erasmus ; 6. Northern Europe 1519-1545: The Age of Melanchthon ; 7. Northern Europe 1545-1580: Ramus and company ; 8. Southern Europe in the Sixteenth Century ; 9. New Syntheses 1600-1620: Keckermann, Vossius and Caussin ; 10. Manuals of Tropes and Figures ; 11. Letter-writing manuals ; 12. Preaching manuals and Legal dialectics ; 13. Vernacular Rhetorics ; 14. . Conclusion: Renaissance Rhetoric ; Bibliography of Secondary Works ; Glossary of Rhetorical and Dialectical Terms