A History of Renaissance Rhetoric 1380–1620 (review)

Peter Mack’s book ambitiously attempts to provide an overview of the whole field of Renaissance rhetoric, which consisted of more than 15,000 editions of over 3,500 rhetoric textbooks and manuals printed between 1460 and 1700. Rhetoric—the training in writing and speech delivery that originated in Greek city-states and dominated higher education throughout the ancient world—revived in Northern Italy during the fourteenth century and became a truly important subject in the middle of the fifteenth century (when Aristotle’s works were translated and printing presses disseminated them). This book identifies the writers of this Renaissance rhetoric, briefly describing their biographical backgrounds, the print history of their works, the important components of their texts, and their relationship to the rhetorical trends around them. It also provides outlines and concise descriptions of the primary traits of rhetoric textbooks and manuals. Mack relies on previous modern scholarship about the most important authors of these works; in the process, he also exposes certain tendencies in publication history and offers some interpretation of scholarly trends. A History of Renaissance Rhetoric makes no pretense that it offers an exhaustive account of all Renaissance rhetoric, but instead works to identify sources and comparable texts for further study.

Mack classifies his descriptions according to what he considers the seven most important characteristics that each Renaissance rhetoric textbook and manual exhibits: first, each rhetorical work provides close readings of classical texts; second, it renews the connection between rhetoric and dialectic; third, it exhibits interest in arousing its audience’s emotions; fourth, it revives interest in disposition—which is to say, the arrangement of an oration’s points; fifth, it emphasizes copia, or the expression of the same sentence in a variety of manners; sixth, it collects and produces sententiae, proverbs, descriptions, examples, and comparisons; seventh, it foregrounds style, particularly figures and tropes. While Mack considers all Renaissance rhetoric to exhibit these features, he notices a distinction between the works from the first half of the sixteenth century and those from the second half. The book suggests that there are five distinguishing features of the latter period, including increased attention to delivery, method, and vernacular rhetoric, emphasis on epideictic oratory, and heightened debates about Cicero’s role as the only model for imitation.

Mack organizes his immense project into fourteen chapters, arranged according to regions, time periods, rhetorical genres, and seminal authors. As the following chapter-by-chapter breakdown indicates, the book’s principles for organization repeatedly fluctuate. After the introduction discusses the state of the field of rhetorical studies, his second chapter provides an overview of how these works were disseminated throughout Europe, pointing out the primary differences between medieval and Renaissance rhetoric by emphasizing the Renaissance’s increased access to Greek authors particularly through the development of the printing press. Nonetheless, Mack acknowledges that Italian rhetoricians had access to Greek learning by 1390, earning them the third chapter, which explicates their contributions as the first to express what came to be the guiding principles of Renaissance rhetoric—despite their limited circulation. However, the majority of A History of Renaissance Rhetoric centers on the rhetorical works that underwent multiple editions after the invention of the printing press. The next two chapters focus on the writers Rudolph Agricola and Erasmus. Assigning them their own chapters because he admires their originality, Mack claims that Agricola produced the first modern rhetoric textbook, thereby garnering a place alongside Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian.

The next three chapters focus on geographical regions, beginning with Northern Europe between 1519 and 1545, which Mack considers the age of Philipp Melanchthon because Melanchthon helped rhetoric transition from the medieval emphasis on scholastic logic to the Renaissance connection between rhetoric and humanistic dialectic. Chapter 7 then describes the latter half of the century in Northern Europe, most notably the contributions of Ramus and Talon, who retain Melanchthon’s connection between rhetoric and dialectic, but reduce the number of doctrines in their textbooks to help students complete their reading and...