Renaissance Debates on Rhetoric (review)

224 Reviews Rebhorn, Wayne A., ed. and trans., Renaissance Debates on Rhetoric, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2000; paper; pp. viii, 332; R R P £14.95; ISBN 0801482062. The Renaissance has long been known as 'the age of rhetoric', but this collec of writings on the subject demonstrates w h y rhetoric was such an important, and yet unsettling force within Renaissance culture. Stressing the intention that the texts should speak for themselves, Wayne R e b h o m utilises excerpts, supplementing these with explanatory notes where necessary, in order to include the broadest selection of writers possible. Renaissance Debates on Rhetoric features 25 writers, spanning the period from Petrarch in the mid-fourteenth century to Rene Bary in the mid-seventeenth century. The texts range from expositions of rhetorical devices to extravagant attacks and ardent defences of rhetoric's power. Each selection is prefaced by helpful biographical details, a brief overview of the writer's work, and a short introduction to the selected text/s. Footnotes explain obscurities and trace sources where necessary, while the inclusion of a biographical glossary and a bibliography of works on rhetoric increase the userfriendliness of the volume. Rebhom has modernised the spelling of English texts, and his preference for idiomatic English has ensured that even the more obscure translations remain accessible. There is nothing monolithic about the texts included in this volume: they rehearse the disputes of classical antiquity, but illuminate the relevance of such arguments to Renaissance culture and thought. In an intelligent introduction, Rebhom outlines the disparity between writers w h o assert the inherent nobility of the art of rhetoric, and those who provide grave warnings about its capacity for disrupting social order and threatening peace. Somewhere between these poles, Francis Bacon and Peter Ramus appear to justify rhetoric while, at the same time, reveal their hostility towards an art of words. Rebhom conjectures that eloquence is easily dismissed in this way as 'mere rhetoric' (p. 10), due to its association with subjective rather than absolute truths. This tenuous relationship between truth and rhetoric is taken up by opponents, including Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and John Jewel, w h o deride rhetoric as the art of lying, declaring it to be an instrument of social dismption and the symptom of afracturedstate. In response, proponents, including George of Trebizond, laud rhetoric as the great equaliser, an indicator of man's worth, and the means of acquiring and maintaining social order. In a reversal of Mirandola's criticism, Rene Bary ventures so far as to assert eloquence's capacity for impeding man's corruption of truth (p. 286). Reviews 225 Rebhom has chosen and edited his texts carefully in order to highlight the scope of Renaissance debate about the usefulness and role of rhetoric in society. Excerpts from Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's On Rhetoric and Francesco Patrizi's Ten Dialogues on Rhetoric convey a concern that the art, perfected by legal practitioners, could subordinate the unbiased discovery of truth to the lawyer's desire to 'win'. B y way of contrast to such attacks, writers including Nicholas Caussin and Philip Melanchthon defend the power of rhetoric as a thing of beauty, a 'heavenly seed' capable of inspiring 'people's spirits' to feelings ofdivinity (p. 275). The rhetorician is thus variously imagined. For some writers, he is Pygmalion-like in his obsessive artifice and, for others, he embodies the civilising force of Orpheus' song. It is perhaps in the positioning of rhetoric as a specifically political tool, however, that these Renaissance writers distinguish themselves from the classical writers they are so heavily indebted to. While the writers of classical antiquity considered rhetoric's role within a republic, Renaissance writers responded to their o w n political model. Absolute sovereignty centralised the power of rhetoric in the Prince, and battled against the reality that an eloquent subject might threaten sovereignty by employing rhetoric to attack his Prince. More generally, this monarchic model was considered susceptible to corruption, providing skilledflattererswith a deceitful means of acquiring favour and status at court. The debate surrounding rhetoric as a political tool is, for R e b h o m 'one ofthe most striking debates' to emerge from...