Andreas Capellanus, Scholasticism, and the Courtly Tradition

2. Love and the Arts: Rhetoric versus Dialectic

2 ≥ LOVE AND THE ARTS Rhetoric versus Dialectic In the previous chapter we referred on several occasions to the liberal arts of the trivium. We must now come back to this important subject and explore in some detail the considerable role that two of these arts, rhetoric and dialectic, played in shaping the De amore. But first we must say a word about the place of the trivium in medieval culture . The trivium in the twelfth century The liberal arts were the foundation of the educational system that the Middle Ages inherited from antiquity. Originally nine in number, they were reduced to seven by the great encyclopedists of the transitional period, who, along with Boethius, were primarily responsible for their transmission to the Middle Ages: Martianus Capella, Cassiodorus, and Isidore of Seville. From the Carolingian period onward, a distinction was made between the three linguistic arts of the trivium, that is, grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic, and the four mathematical arts of the quadrivium, which included arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy . The arts of the trivium came before those of the quadrivium in the curriculum, and in practice the latter were often neglected. Together they formed the basis for all the higher studies: theology, natural philosophy , medicine, and law.1 1. A good general introduction is provided by Wagner. For additional bibliography, particularly on the trivium, see Murphy, Medieval Rhetoric. 42 The three arts of the trivium had in common the fact that all were concerned with the use of language. In theory, the distinction between them was clear: grammar was the art of “speaking correctly,” rhetoric that of “speaking well,” and dialectic that of “speaking truly”; but in practice they overlapped considerably. Rhetoric, in particular, occupied an intermediate position between grammar and dialectic; and since the political and judicial institutions on which classical rhetoric was based had long since disappeared, this art was in danger of succumbing under the combined weight of the other two. Deprived of the forms appropriate to its former deliberative and forensic functions , rhetoric was often reduced to a matter of style or ornamentation, but the figures of style that formed the substance of the rhetorician’s elocutio were also discussed by the grammarians under the guise of “permitted faults.” As a system of argumentation considered apart from its original context, rhetoric was scarcely distinguishable from dialectic, and the two were often lumped together, as in the Didascalicon (2.30) of Hugh of St. Victor, under the rubric “probable argument .” Even the distinction between grammar and dialectic was to be blurred somewhat by the rise of speculative grammar in the thirteenth century.2 Grammar was the ultimate basis of all intellectual activity; it was, in the words of Isidore (Etymologiæ 1.5), “the origin and foundation of liberal letters.” Thus it is always mentioned first among the arts of the trivium , though the order of the other two is sometimes inverted, as in Martianus Capella. Its scope was rather broader than what we associate with grammar, for it included, according to Quintilian (1.4.1), “the science of correct speech and the interpretation of the poets.” Far from being limited to linguistic analysis, etymology, versification, and the like, it constituted a general repository of literary culture. Its basic exercise was the lectio, or close reading of literary texts, in terms not only of grammatical considerations, but also of style and content. It derived its principles from the textbooks of Donatus and Priscian, but most of its substance came from a fixed but flexible canon of curriculum authors, who served not only as models for writing and speaking, but also as love a n d t h e a rts 43 2. On the changing relationship between the arts of the trivium see McKeon, “Rhetoric.” sources of authoritative citation for rhetorical and dialectical argumentation . The relationship of rhetoric to dialectic is discussed in some detail at the beginning of Book Four of Boethius’s De differentiis topicis, a standard textbook for the later Middle Ages. According to his analysis, the two disciplines differ in three respects: in subject matter (in materia ), in methodology (in usu), and in goal (in fine). They differ in subject matter because dialectic examines theses, that is, general questions not involved in circumstances, whereas rhetoric is concerned with hypotheses , that is, particular questions surrounded by circumstances. There are two ways in which they are seen to differ...