In the Renaissance with its absolutistic states the conditions of communications were ruled by the monarchs. This authority was responsible for traffic and publications of mass media. In The End of Europe's Middle Ages Language and Literature of the Applied History Research Group was written: “Until the sixteenth century, Latin was the official language of law, government, business, education and religion in Western Europe. The Latin of written communication was generally considered learned, or high, Latin and composition of documents followed standard guidelines regardless of where the document was written. On the other hand, the common, or Vulgar, Latin was a living language, mingling with and borrowing from regional dialects to suit the needs of local populations.”232 The most impressive invention for communicative practice was printing based on Gutenberg’s printing machine. Societies, correspondence, journals, and books were tools for the formation of the European ‘Republic of Letters’. In Europe oral culture was always only one way of communication producing national folk culture, but dominant was written communication with features for recording. Newspapers were published in centres of Germany, England, Hungary, Holland, and Italy. One of the earliest magazine was the German Erbauliche Monaths-Unterredungen (1663-1668) edited by Johann Rist in Hamburg. The Journal des Sçavans started in Paris edited by the author Denis de Sallo. The London Spy was published between 1698 and 1700.. Educational and entertaining genres like almanacs, travel books, and poetry were published for the urban audience. In Renaissance the exchange of European languages was improved by dictionaries of the local European languages.233
As a cultural movement the Renaissance began in the 14th century in the cities of northern Italy. Scholars and thinkers of the Renaissance saw their own time as a reflection of the much earlier societies of classical Greece and Rome, a world view still indicated in the term Renaissance itself. The printing of books was subject to licensing by the Privy Council in England. The local kings allowed a book to be published only if it was successfully passing the censorship institution. The concept of copyright arose out of the registration of books in the register of the English Stationer's Company. The books censored were not only of political or religious contents. The Emblemata of Andrea Alciati were published in 1551 with the note cum Privilegi. The Orator Politicus, albo Wymowny Polityk, Rozne traktujacy Materye was published cum privilegio regio by Jakub Boczyłowicz was published in Poland in 1699. A Lithuanian geographicanl book with the title Lithvania was published with the note cum privilegio bt Gerhard Mercator around 1600 in Germany.
Leone Battista Alberti’ book De Viris Illustribus was a collection of heroes' lives including both ancient heroes and Christian figures. Petrarca wrote a series of fictive letters to classical figures like Cicero and Ovid.234 Petrarch wrote a letter to the dead Quintilian. The Renaissance education still has its roots the tradition of the trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and
232 The End of Europe's Middle Ages. Applied History Research Group. The University of Calgary. [1.7.2007].
<Http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/endmiddle/FRAMES/langframe.html>
233A standard feature of historical education from the late Roman times to the 14th century in Byzantium and in the West was early medieval education in Ireland, England, and France called scholasticism. Bolgar pointed out the ways scholars selected and interpreted classical texts and analyzed the political motives for their choices and views.
Cf. Bolgar, R. R. The Classical Heritage and Its Beneficiaries. Cambridge: University Press 1958. Pp. 25-35.
234 Renaissance Eloquence. Studies in the Theory and Practice of Renaissance Rhetoric. Ed. by James J. Murphy.
Berkeley: University Press 1982. Pp. 72-76.
dialectic.235 The goal of rhetorical study was to demonstrate one´s ideas in the most elegant form. Rhetoric had the position as decorum, the finishing refinement, in upper-class education.236 Quintilian and much of Cicero’s texts were unknown or lost until the Renaissance.237 Many new school textbooks for rhetoric were written in this era following Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian.238 In the 14th century Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria and the works of Aristotle were known.
After the rediscovery of complete copies of Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria and Cicero's De Oratore the humanists produced rhetorical handbooks.239 In education and the scholarly life humanism meant the pursuit of studying particularly mathematics, rhetoric, literary studies, art, and history. The studia humanitatis (studies of humanities) were based upon the study of Latin and Greek. Humanists gave common usage priority over sets of logical rules stressing on classical values and literacy per se. Translations, compilations, commentaries, and editios of contemporary original rhetorical writings were available. Editions of classic texts like Aristotle's Rhetoric, Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria, Cicero's De Oratore, Brutus, Orator, and translations of Plato's Gorgias and Phaedrus, and Aristotle's Rhetoric itself replaced Arabic translations in this period.
The heritage of antiquity still was bound to the Latin language. The Neolatin language of this time was a basic tool for the access to cultural documents, literary production, and contemporary communication between scholars. The groups using Latin rhetoric during Renaissance included artists, professionals, and scholars. The Greek and Latin heritage of rhetoric also influenced the esteem of national languages as educated languages. The Italian language used the term rétorica, in Spanish the term retorico was used, and in French the Greek term became rhetorique. The national languages were commonly used and even poets used them for works. Dante Alighieri in one writer in one of the most flourishing cities of the Middle Ages, Florence.240 The Italian poet Dante Alighieri wrote in Latin language a dissertation about the Italian language of the local people (locutio vulgarium gentium) with the title De Vulgari Eloquentia. Dante demonstrated rhetorical principles in his writings.
Dante entered his writing career with his first work Vita Nuova, a critical exposition of his sonnets. Dante influenced younger homines literati (men of letters) with the research in structures, stylistics, and allusions of classical Greek and Roman literature.241 At the beginnings of the modern era the study of rhetoric became displaced and fragmented. In contrast to medieval scholastic philosophy the representatives of Renaissance rhetoric gave attention to clearness of expression and idiomatic use of classical Latin grammar and its vocabulary. With this experience in literacy (litterarum peritia) the scholars understood language as the basic tool of culture. These scholars also were aware of the fact that the rise and decline of a language -its historical aspect- was linked to exterior factors such as the
235 Cf. Percival, W. Keith. "Grammar and Rhetoric in the Renaissance.” In: Renaissance Eloquence. Ed. by James Jerome. London: Sage 1983. Pp. 303-330.
236 Cf. LaRusso, Dominic A. “Rhetoric in the Italian Renaissance.” In: Renaissance Eloquence. Ed. by James Jerome. London: Sage 1983. Pp. 37-55.
237 Talmor, Sascha. The Rhetoric of Criticism from Hobbes to Coleridge. Oxford: University Press 1984. Pp.
119-127.
238 Cf. Kennedy, George A. "Classical Rhetoric in the Renaissance.” In: Classical Rhetoric and its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times. London: Croom Helm 1980. Pp. 195-215.
239 Witt, Ronald G. Italian Humanism and Medieval Rhetoric. Aldershot: Ashgate 2001.
240 Cf. Rhetoric in the Middle Ages. A History of Rhetorical Theory from Saint Augustine to the Renaissance.
Ed. by James J. Murphy. Berkeley: University Press 1974. Pp. 54-61.
241 Cf. The Renaissance Philosophy of Man. Ed. by Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller and John Herman Randall, Jr. in Collaboration with Hans Nachod and Others. Chicago: University Press 1948. Pp. 98-103.
political development of a state and its institutions. Renaissance humanists like Leonardo Bruni were aware of the decline of the Latin language since the fall of the Roman Empire.
In Italy legalists began the fashion of using the Latin style. Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406) connected juridical writings with the liberal arts as key knowledge to wisdom.242 Salutati was a Florentine political administrator who wrote treatises on humanism based upon a wide knowledge he accumulated in a large library of ancient Greek and Roman texts.243 Niccolò Machiavelli wrote Il Principe about various qualities of a ruler. The Book of the Courtier by Baldassare Castiglione describes the characteristics of a perfect gentleman following the Roman ideal of the vir bonus.244 At the beginning of the 15th century emerged a new consciousness of language as a historical phenomenon. Variety in Renaissance literature continued as rhetorical studies focused on translations, compilations, commentaries, original rhetorical writings were available. Rhetoric influenced public oratory and preaching and had a significant effect on such diverse fields like literature, philosophy, and political theory. For Lorenzo Valla (1405-1457) logic was the handmaiden of rhetoric.245 For Renaissance humanists like Valla in the art of speaking also philosophical skills had to be employed for the demands of an active communication especially regarding the duties of a statesman. Valla even claimed that the art of speaking is superior to philosophy.246 Valla accepted a chair of eloquence in the University of Pavia. His standard work is De Elegantia Linguae Latinae.
Giovanni Pico della Mirandelo in his treatise Oratio de Hominis Dignitatae (The Dignity of Man) (1486) wrote about act of judgment (‘iudicare’). The influence of the Italian Renaissance extended into all kinds of European history and culture. This was correspondingly supported by an increasing interest in the centrality of humans. Mario Nizolio (1488-1567) unified rhetoric and philosophy in a new philosophy rejecting the old language of scholasticism. Nizolio intended to prevent the separation of things (res) and words (verba) and tried to make a unity of rhetoric and philosophy. Nizolio claimed that concrete material things form the constants of discursive processes. Francesco Patrizi (1529-1597) intended to geometrize rhetoric in order to create an instrument for exact sciences considering language as a tool to represent ‘truth’. His concept is derived from a historical viewpoint to languages in order to rediscover a language, which refers to an essential ‘truth’.
This concept stands in the tradition of ‘ideal forms’ of Platonic thinking.
Visuality was important for the Renaissance culture and emblems were a typical application of visuality. Andrea Alciato's Emblematum Liber had a strong influence and popularity in the 16th and 17th centuries for later emblem books. Alciato's Emblematum Liber is a collection of 212 Latin emblem poems. Each of the poems consisted of a motto as proverb or another short expression, a picture, and an epigrammatic text. Alciato's book was first published in 1531 and it was reprinted in various editions already during the author's lifetime. In the prefatory
242 Cf. for Salutati: Witt, Roland G. Italian Humanism and Medieval Rhetoric. Aldershot, Burlington, Singapore, Sydney: Ashgate 2001. Pp. 538-563.
243 Cf. De Rosa, Daniela. Coluccio Salutati. Il Cancelliere e il Pensatore Politico. 1st edition. Firenze: La Nuava Italia 1980. Pp. 24-31.
244 Cf. Baldwin, Charles Sears. Renaissance Literary Theory and Practice. Classicism in the Rhetoric and Poetic of Italy, France, and England, 1400-1600. Ed. with Introduction by Donald Lemen Clark. New York: Columbia University Press 1959. Pp. 48-54.
Lichtenstein, Jacqueline. Eloquence of Color. Rhetoric and Painting in the French Classical Age. Transl. by Emily McVarish. Berkeley: University Press 1993. Pp. 90-96.
245 Cf. Gerl, Hanna-Barbara. Rhetorik als Philosophie. Lorenzo Valla. München: Fink 1974. Pp. 81-85.
Lorenzo Valla. Le Postille all'Institutio Oratoria di Quintiliano. Edizione Critica a Cura di Lucia Cesarini Martinelli e Alessandro Perosa. Padova: Antenore 1996. Pp. 17-23.
Retorica, Humanismo y Filologia. Quintiliano y Lorenzo Valla. Jorge Fernandez. La Rioja: Instituto de Estudios Riojanos. Ayuntamiento de Calahorra 1999. Pp. 87-93.
246Burckhardt, Jacob. Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien. Köln: DuMont 1956. Pp. 171-177.
writing for Joannes Sambucus’ Emblemata (1564) the verb communicare is used in order to describe the informative function of an emblem by a ungrateful interpretation (interpretatione non ingrata):
Constitui enim, quae imitatione inter Homerum & Virgilium conveniunt ποτετυπομενα, multa Athenaei, plura Philostrati, &
Pausaniae, unà cum posticis vetustorum nummorum partibus, lapillis variè insignibus, interpretatione non ingrata, cum bonis, & harum rerum studiosis brevi communicare. Intereà haec lector fidei, pignorisque nomine habeto, ac ut citiùs reliqua prodeant, cum venia laudato. Quòd verò aliqua clarissimorum virorum nomina addiderim, non ambitiosè factum putes: nec enim hos novi solùm, qui omnem adhuc aetatem apud exteros traduxi: sed ut pro meritis.247
Rhetoric became a part of the contemporary culture like the following example exemplifies:
The game Tarot included in a copy attributed by tradition to Andrea Mantegna in this European Renaissance version the classical system of education in Renaissance emblematic representing the personifications of Beggar, Knave, Artisan, Merchant, Noble, Knight, Doge, King, Emperor, and Pope. The second group contains the muses and their divine leader such as Calliope, Urania, Terpsichore, Erato, Polyhymnia, Thalia, Melpomene, Euterpe, Clio, and Apollo. The third group combines part of the liberal arts and sciences with other departments of human learning, as grammar, logic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, music, poetry, philosophy, astrology, and theology. The fourth group consists of the liberal arts and enumerates the virtues such as astronomy, chronology, cosmology, temperance, prudence, strength, justice, charity, hope, and faith. The fifth and last group presents the System of the Heavens with Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, an ‘Eighth Sphere’,
‘Primum Mobile’, and ‘First Cause’. This melange of cultural heritage is typical for Renaissance culture.248
During the Renaissance period the importance of rhetoric increased also in North Europe in England. It was connected with grammar, history, poetry, and morals as human studies (studia humana). In England rhetoric was an essential language skill for public speakers.249 In the 1400s one of the first debates in England was held between the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Middle English literature represents Geoffrey Chaucer´s (1340-1400) The Canterbury Tales. The Proto-Indo European root gar, gra, gre means to shout. In Old Indian járate means `to crackle (as fire)'. Proto-Germanic root tala-n has the meanings tale, number, count, tell. In Old Norse tal means number and talk. Norwegian uses tal, tala, tala, telja.
Swedish uses tal; tala, talja. Danish uses tal,tale, and tälle. Old English täl is tale, number, series. Talu is tale, talk, story, talk, discussion, charge; tellan means to tell, narrate, recount, state a case, to tell, count, reckon, and calculate. Old Frisian has tale and tele for number, story, and speech.250 In Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer The Clerk's Prologue addresses to the writer in order to demonstate the rhetorical ornaments:
247 Prefatory Matter for Sambucus, Joannes. Emblemata (1564). Glasgow University Emblem Website.
[2.2.2007].
<Http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/french/othertext.php?id=FSAb&t=1>
248 The Tarot in History. Sacred Texts. [2.2.2007].
<Http://www.sacred-texts.com/tarot/pkt/pkt0104.htm>
249 Cf. Morhmann, Gerald P. "Oratorical Delivery and Other Problems in Current Scholarship on English Renaissance Rhetoric.” In: Renaissance Eloquence. Ed. by James Jerome. London: Sage 1983. Pp. 56-83.
250 Databases. StarLing Database Server. [2.2.2007].
<Http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/main.cgi?root=config&morpho=0>
Sir clerk of Oxford," our good host then said, "You ride as quiet and still as is a maid But newly wedded, sitting at the board;
This day I've heard not from your tongue a word.
Perhaps you mull a sophism that's prime, But Solomon says, each thing to its own time.
"For God's sake, smile and be of better cheer, It is no time to think and study here.
Tell us some merry story, if you may;
For whatsoever man will join in play, He needs must to the play give his consent.
But do not preach, as friars do in Lent, To make us, for our old sins, wail and weep, And see your tale shall put us not to sleep.
"Tell us some merry thing of adventures.
Your terms, your colours, and your speech-figures, Keep them in store till so be you indite
High style, as when men unto kings do write.
Speak you so plainly, for this time, I pray,
'That we can understand what things you say."251
Modern English was used by William Shakespeare in his plays and sonnets. For the British rhetoric Aristotelian heritage in logic was commonly used from 1615 to 1825. The Middle English word rethorik derived from the Old French term rethorique. The roots lead to the Latin rhetorica, a deriverate from Greek rhetorike (techne).252 Oratory was applied in poetry and dramas such as Shakespeare’s plays, Sir Phillip Sidney’s book The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, and Edmund Spenser’s romantic epic The Faerie Queene as well as in sonnets.253 The effect of humanism on English literature was wide, for example in the works of Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare.254 Shakespeare took subject matter for many plays from classical sources like Coriolanus, Troilus and Cressida, and Julius Caesar.255 William Shakespeare used the term communication in the play King Henry the Eighth.
ABERGAVENNY. I do know
Kinsmen of mine, three at the least, that have By this so sicken'd their estates that never They shall abound as formerly.
251 Chaucer, Geoffrey. Canterbury Tales. Prologue. Internet Archive. [2.2.2007].
<Http://web.archive.org/web/20001016210202/www.vt.edu/vt98/academics/books/chaucer/clerks_p>
252 Article “Rhetoric.” In: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Online Edition.
[9.8.2007].
<Http://www.bartleby.com/61/80/R0218000.html>
253 Cf. The Rhetoric of Renaissance Poetry from Wyatt to Milton. Ed. by Thomas O. Sloan and Raymond B.
Waddington. Berkley: University Press 1974. Pp. 72-76.
254 Robinson, Marsha Studebaker. Shakespeare and the Rhetoric of History. Ann Arbor: University Michigan Press 1993. Pp. 95-102.
255 Pagden, Anthony (ed.). The Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: University Press 1990. Pp. 171-176.
Condren, Conal. “On the Rhetorical Foundations of Leviathan.” In: History of Political Thought. 11. 4 (1990).
Pp. 103-20.
Burgess, Glenn. “Rhetorics for Troubled Times.” In: Morrill, John (ed.). The Impact of the English Civil War.
London: Collina and Brown 1991. Pp. 190-196.
Burgess, Glenn. The Politics of the Ancient Constitution: An Introduction to English Political Thought, 1603-1642. University Park: Pennsylvania State University 1993. Pp. 175-181.
BUCKINGHAM. O, many
Have broke their backs with laying manors on 'em For this great journey. What did this vanity But minister communication of
A most poor issue?256
The Renaissance theorists didn’t make the distinction between pathos and ethos. Pathos or pathopoeia was any emotional appeal. Ethos was a description of a character. Thomas Moore's contribution to England’s humanism was Utopia figuring out an ideal society. An example of a replace of non-English languages with the English language is the Prayer Book rebellion of 1549 with the Book of Common Prayer replacing Latin with English as the language of the national Anglican Church. The concept of rhetoric in the early modern period is distinct from its medieval predecessors, where the art of elocution was fragmented into several disciplines. The personification of rhetoric as Lady Rhetoric with a sword and a lily was presented in the woodcuts from the encyclopaedia Margarita Philosophica published in the year 1504. Thomas Wilson's The Arte of Rhetorique was written in English and one of the most successful rhetorical books with eight different editions between 1553 and 1585. This book is a systematic overview of the fundamental theory of literature. Wilson´s The Arte of Rhetorique was a compilation of all teachings of rhetoric. Wilson’s poem Eloquence First was related to the homiletic eloquence:
Eloquence First
giuen by God, and after lost by man, and last repayred
giuen by God, and after lost by man, and last repayred