History of European Idem, Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 427-437, 1984 Printed in Great Britain.

0191-6599184 $3.00 + o.cm 0 1984 Pqamon Press Ltd.

REVIEWS

THE AGE OF ELOQUENCE

L’Age de I’Eloquence. Rhktorique et “res literaria” de la Renaissance au seuil de IVpoque classique, M. Fumaroli (Geneva: Droz, 1980), 882 pp., SFr 120.-.

This enormous book, the product of more than a decade’s work, offers the first adequate study of the crucial transition, in France, from a general European Renaissance revival of rhetoric to the emergence of a specifically national literature with specifically French preoccupations. It records a long- drawn-out process of critical discussion and controversy over linguistic, liter- ary, rhetorical and ethical themes, in which France was the inheritor simul- taneously of ancient Rome and Renaissance Italy. It studies ‘le caract&-e li la fois englobant et agonistique de la culture rhttorique du XVII’ sitcle’ (p. 2) by reviewing a whole series of controversies, great and small, and by recreating the social and institutional contexts of rhetoric. It is at once a history of the rhetorical tradition, a study of concepts of style and a sociology of rhetoric. It covers a vast sweep of history, mentioning hundreds of writers, thousands of books, in a learned but lucid way. It makes few concessions to readers who know little about French history, literature or society, and specialists in those fields will get most out of it; yet the student of European ideas, language and literary forms can learn a great deal.

I

In his introduction, Marc Fumaroli begins with the decline of rhetoric in the nineteenth century - rhetoric was suppressed in state schools in 1885, being replaced by literary history - and shows how twentieth-century attitudes to French literature (in France, America and England) were shaped by a system that had rejected rhetoric. France lagged behind America, England and Germany in the revival of rhetoric dating from the 1930s but in the work of such writers as Munteano, Truchet, Michel, Fontane and Zuber, a French revival has taken place, of which this work is one of the most substantial fruits. The author’s goal is

de voir la culture rhetorique du XVII” sibcle non plus a travers un concept de ‘littkature Clabort! tardivement, mais B l’aide de ses propres critkres, et des dkbats dont ils Ctaient l’objet en leur temps. Cet effort pour se dkplacer B l’intkrieur d’une culture disparue exclut tout sentiment de superiorit du prksent sur le pass6 (p. 20).

It can be said at once that Professor Fumaroli exemplifies that imaginative recreation of the past so necessary to the writing of history. The fascination of the century covered here is that it was a period of intense literary discussion

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which had not yet produced a major new literature: ‘Age de I’Eloquence, &e de r~~~torique, ie XVII’ sitMe voit naitre les Belies-Lettres~ ii n’est pas encore l’cige de la littkrature’ (p. 31). To study this broad spectrum the author had to isolate the larger contexts, sacred and secular, literary and political, as well as the institutions within which they developed.

The book is divided into three main sections, each a book in itself. The first, ‘Rome et la Querelle du Ciceronianisme’ (pp. 3%230), is concerned, first, with those classical rhetoricians important for seventeenth-century France: Cicero, Seneca, Tacitus and St. Augustine; later chapters will show the more surprising popularity of Aulus G&us, Plutarch and Philostratus. Oddly enough, Quintilian is not given separate treatment, although Curtius and Muntkano have indicated his importance in France, and the Rhetorica ad Herennium is also passed over, even though one recognises frequent borrow- ings from it (e.g. pp. 8.5, 146, 177, 277, 509). The classical writers, especially Cicero, were the reference points in a prolonged debate in the sixteenth century about irnitffti~, especially the imitation of Cicero. Moving with equal familiarity in Italy, Spain and France, and correctly integrating neo-Latin literature to form a total picture, the author reviews the first phase of Ciceronianism, which he sees as coming to an end with the burning of Etienne Dolet -post hoc, non propter hoc, one is tempted to murmur, disturbed at the suggestion that Dolet was a martyr for his views on prose style (pp. 1lOff) - and the less sensational second ‘Renaissance’ of Ciceronianism (pp. 160ff). Any writer faced with such a vast amount of material must organise it somehow. but I felt that the division of Cicero’s influence into first and second phases was artificial, since there cannot have been a decade in which his work was not edited, commented, translated, digested (see the select list of Cicero editions, Bibliography: items 154-203, and Ciceronian manuals, items 37&8X). The author observes later, sometimes with surprise, that Cicero continued to be influential (e.g. pp. 513f, 523. 618) but the question is rather, when was he not‘?

Throughout this section one meets fresh reassessments of men and books. The Thesaurus Ciceronianus of M. T. Nizolius, mocked in its time by Sir Philip Sidney and Francis Bacon, and dismissed by Toffanin as the work of a reactionary, is now revalued, and ‘doit Ptre cunsid~r~ Le modkle de celui de In Crusca et de celui de I’Acadkmie frangaise, fixant un “bon usage”’ (p, 121). Equally just is the judgment that the fight over rhetoric, dismissed by Toffa- nin as ‘un signe de “fatigue” de l’humunisme italien, nous semble uu contruire un signe de sa vita&P et de sa fidelity, duns des circonstunces d$ficiles’ (p. 122). There are noteworthy discussions of Bembo, Erasmus (too brief), Juan Huarte (far too long) and Muret (rather diffuse and uncritical). The reader frequently finds illuminating comments, such as the description of Book IV of De Doctrina Chris&ma as ‘h lr fois la dernitre rhdtorique antique et la premiPre rh~torique eccl~siustiq~.ie’ (p. 71), or this pungent remark on inflated style: ‘Du sublime ir I’enflure, il n’y a qu’un pas’ (p. 152).

Yet, while having digested a great deal of matter, it seems to me that the author has not made a fresh evaluation of the Ciceronianianti-Ciceronian controversy. Relying on the outmoded studies of Morris W. Croll and George

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Williamson, the deficiencies of which were shown up by two books published as long ago as 1968,’ Professor Fumaroli takes at face value Seneca’s attacks on rhetoric (pp. 59ff) as constituting a valid criticism of Cicero. But much of Seneca’s work consists of scoring points off attitudes or ways of life which he considers inferior to his own, always negating others yet never creating a positive alternative. His own style is just as ‘rhetorical’, as Eduard Norden showed many years ago,2 and the opposition between Seneca and Cicero is a figment of early modern historians’ imagination. These unsatisfactory mod- ern discussions have confused two issues: on the one hand, the influence of Cicero’s rhetoric, with its vision of language as the expression of humanity in its highest state - an influence felt in all corners of Europe, in every manifestation of rhetoric; and, on the other, the controversy over the limits of imitating Cicero, provoked by those fanatics who held that Cicero’s vocabu- lary, grammar and syntax, constituted the acme of Latin style, deviation from which could not be tolerated. Yet a third position, sometimes dubbed ‘anti- Ciceronian’, is that of a general dislike for the grand style (not, of course, Cicero’s only resource); this ought rather to be dubbed ‘anti-oratorical’. The three concepts have been so confused by some moderns that one must have severe reservations about their usefulness in understanding the literature of the past.

The author himself refers to ‘ies Zimites et ~i~suffisa~ce des concepts de “ciceronianisme” et d’ “anti-ci&onianisme” . . . pour dkrire les dtbats rht?- toriques du XVZ’ et du XVI;I”.si2cles’ (p. 62), and six hundred pages later notes as a general trait of humanism that both sides in the dispute draw on Cicero (p. 664 and note). If one can find ‘chez Cickon des arguments contre le cic~ro~ianisme’ then these terms need much sharper definition. Similarly with the controversy (pp. 198f, 262f) between ‘Atticism’ and ‘Asianism’ (where Wilamowitz’s classic article should have been used3), the terms convey a certain broad contrast between an exuberant (or lavish) and an austere (or crabbed) style, but they depend, of course, on individual estimates of style, which - to say the least - can fluctuate widely. Further compounds, such as ‘L’asia~isme ovidien’ (p. 215) and ‘L’attic~me s~~~quien’ (p. 217) confuse the issue further. While this section contains the main discussion of the Cicero controversy, there is an awkward duplication or repeat later. with the so- called anti-Ciceronianism of Henri Estienne and Turnebus (pp. 461ff), and the term seems to decline to a vague catch-all (e.g. p. 488). We read again of a ‘Stoic opposition to rhetoric’ (p. 4841, which seems to be rather self-deluding (which Stoic did not use rhetoric?), and of Seneca, ‘enemy of eloquence’ (p. 500) -enemy of all eloquence save his own, one wants to add. Seneca is a writer whom it is dangerous to take at his own estimation. On Stoicism as a philosophy, and of the various forms it took, the author has several interesting remarks.

II

The second part, ‘Du Multiple B I’Un: Les “Styles Jesuites” ’ (pp. 231- 423), is an exemplary study of the process by which the Jesuits, under

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constant attack from the University of Paris between 1551 and 1763, survived a virulent pamphlet war to become not only masters of education but arbiters of taste. Their need to be accepted by society and win, if possible, the patronage of the King, gave epideictic rhetoric a new social role, in the flattery of the monarch (pp. 238-44). Noting ‘la place centraie et unifiante que

la r~~to~i~ue occupe dam la culture j&-suite d’abn’ (p. 256), the author treats two main groups, ‘les Jesuits rh&eurs en frangais’, who appealed to a popular audience in the vernacular, and ‘les Jesuits Crudits’ (pp. 251, 255), who wrote for an international Latin readership. The writers studied include court preachers, such as Richeome, Coton and Binet (pp. 257ff), and the amazingly learned Nicolas Caussin (pp. 279-98, 362-71) and Louis de Cressolles (pp. 299-326), to whose encyclopaedic knowledge of rhetoric - enshrined in Latin tomes of six or seven hundred pages each - the author responds with a comparable mixture of scholarship and critical acumen. Although treated separately as an institutional growth, Jesuit rhetoric embraced many of the topics found in other schools of this period: the rise of the vernacular, and the need to establish French as a language for rhetoric and literature (pp. 268, 272, 300); the importance of epideictic rhetoric (pp. 290, 293, 302, 312, 326f, 334, 365); and the constantly recurring preoccupation with the corruption of eloquence (pp. 392ff). The range of interests in Jesuit rhetoric is so great that it is impossible to speak of a unified attitude. A case in point is P&e FranGois Vavasseur’s Orationes (delivered at the beginning of each school year between 1629 and 1636), which break with many of the society’s traditions:

De fait, 2 les lire en se souvenant qu’elies sent contemporaines, B peu d’annkes prks dans un sens ou dans I’autre, des Parallela de P. Caussin, du Palarium Eloquentiae du P. Pelletier, et des Peintures Morales du P. Le Moyne, on est bien obligC de renoncer aux confortables chronologies rkpandues par les simpli- ficateurs. If faut constater que des hommes apparus B la m&me Cpoque, dans le mitme pays, et au surplus dans la mCme SociCtC rCputCe homogkne. sinon totalitaire, ne vivent pas B la m&me heure historique, et ne subissent pas au m2me degrC la pression du milieu et du moment (p. 409).

This readiness to represent historical actuality, in which several different positions coexist in a single institution, is refreshing.

In the admirably detailed exposition of Jesuit rhetoric one element in particular deserves comment, the great emphasis placed on visual effects, appeals to the auditory’s imagination by using such figures as hypotyposis, ekph~asis, prosopopoeia. all forms of de~o~stratio or e~~dent~a, in which the orator appeals to the listener to see such and such a scene or person (pp. 258- 61). Professor Fumaroli valuably relates this tendency to the vogue for Philostratus’ Imagines, and shows how it allied itself to the revival of hiero- glyphs as a potentially sacred language (pp. 281ff). While many Jesuit works rely on the visual rhetoric of ~zypotyposis (pp. 358, 361,368,3X)), the apoge was reached by P&e Joseph Filikre in Le Miroir sans tache (1636), with its remarkable extended allegory of images and reflections, which the author connects with Neoplatonist doctrine of unity and multiplicity (pp. 371-7). Yet although he has chronicled this trend he has not fully accounted for it, and

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one detects a certain gap in his treatment, caused, I believe, by a failure to grasp the function of rhetorical figures.

One of the distinguishing features of this book is its concentration on the institutions within which rhetoric flourished, an approach that results in a pioneering sociology of rhetoric. Yet no-one can do everything: while hand- ling a remarkable range of large-scale manifestations - court, parliament, colleges, religious groups - the author shows a certain reluctance to grapple with the minutiae, the lore of schemes and tropes to which all rhetoricians devoted so much time and energy. To have included a discussion of the contents of the rhetoric books as regards style and language would have swollen this study to intolerable lengths, and the decision to focus on what one might call macrorhetoric is certainly justified. But it means that on some questions of detail the reader is insufficiently informed. The author nowhere expounds the basic system of rhetoric, which he could have done by choosing one or two typical textbooks. The result is that neither he nor the common reader is in a position to evaluate or distinguish individual positions. The simple fact is that since the earliest classification of rhetoric, and because sight was held to be the strongest of the senses, appeals to the visual imagination have always been placed in the category of the figurae sententiae, the most powerful group of figures for moving the passions. The Jesuits’ development of this doctrine is just another instance of their supreme efficiency in knowing how to move and persuade.

Professor Fumaroli several times notes the attention given by his authors to the figures of thought, but he fails to connect it with their emphasis on visual appeal. Pere Etienne Binet, in his Essay des merveil~es de nature et des plus nobles artifices (1621), includes a compartment of ~nr~chi.ssemens de l’efo- quence which lists just fifteen figures of thought, the traditional list, including hypotyposis, apostrophe and prosopopoeia, the last of which ‘donne voix a “ce qui ne peut parler”, personnifications allegoriques . . . Ptres invisibles du monde spirituel’, and others. The author rightly says that ‘les figures de pens&es decrites . . . sont les elements moteurs destines a animer le spectacle visuel Pvoque par la parole du predicateur’ (p. 269), yet comments unfavour- ably that the Jesuit preachers used a ~~ath~tisme th~atra~ suitable only to oral delivery: ‘Leur rhetorique est trap fixt?e sur les figures de pen&e, sur les effets voyants qui frappent I’imagination et les passions, pour passer du mouvement exterieur de la periode et de la tirade a l’ordre interieur’, and to the realm of thought, or good taste (pp. 272f). To which I can only apply the words of St. Augustine, that if a sermon does not move its listeners to repent or to love God with greater ardour, it has failed. Even though M. Fumaroli finds that ‘le “sev~re”Ca~sin’ - the most impressive and influential of all the Jesuit rhetoricians - ‘comme Binet le “fleuri” accordent done la pr~~rninen~e aux figures de pens&e, relevant de ~invention et de la disposition du discours, et tendant a conferer a celui-ci mouvement et relief thtatral et pictural, . . .’ (p. 338) - he still speaks of these visual appeals with distaste.

In his ‘Conclusion GCnCrale’ he says that ‘les plus do&s parmi les Jbuites de Cour font de leur eloquence une sorte de cinematique en couleurs, en relief. . .: elle est admirablement accord&e a la socitte du spectacle qu’est la

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Cour, a l’hypertrophie de ~‘jmaginut~on qui la caracterise’ (p. 677). Whatever the truth of that judgment on the court, it seems to me a misunderstanding of the integral part that visual appeal plays in classical rhetoric (think of Antony’s devastating use of it over the corpse of Julius Caesar), and I regret the disparaging tone with which the author says that the visual appeal ‘peut .~‘accompagner d’une sorte de bande sonore qui donne une vaix uux chases ou aux personnages decrits’, to form “‘l’audivisuel” jesuite (pp. 678, 681). In an ingenious development he claims that this technique of description ‘ne fait appel a l’imagination que pour mieux rendre imaginable l’inimaginable et vraisemblable l’invruisemblable’. Thus it produces a distrust in the senses while depending on them, to the extent that ‘l’ing~nieuse “rh~turique des peintures” s’expose a corrompre le sens du reel aussi bien que le sens du spirituel duns une meme flottante fetrie’ (p, 679). These are unusually harsh words from an author whose normal style is graciously urbane, but the harshness seems to me misplaced, deriving from a misapprehension of the role of visual appeal. Since this is the only major misconception of rhetoric in the whole work, it seems worth drawing attention to it, even though I find myself in the unfamiliar position of defending the Jesuits!

111

The third part of this vast survey, ‘Le “Stile de Parlement” ’ (pp. 427~672), starts from the formal addresses delivered at the opening of parliament, noting two main themes:

le theme juridico-politique de la ‘grandeur et excellence du Royaume de France’, qui implique une reflexion sur ses ‘antiquit&‘, ses institutions propres, sa langue et ses droits faces aux empi?tements et aux ruses du Saint-Sikge italien; le thkme philosophico-relig~eux des ‘libertks de I’Eglise gal&cane’. qui implique une r&flexion sur le statut ‘conciliare’ de I’Eglise universelle avant les abus de pouvoir des Pontifes romains,

and therefore with the degeneration of the pure, primitive faith (p. 431). Parliament tried to fix an image of itself as an academy of eloquence (p. 476), the writers involved drawing - improbably enough - on Philo of Alexan- dria, whose rhapsodies on logos, the literally creating word, could be purged of their cabbalistic associations and used as a general praise of eloquence (pp. 477-80, 564), so that in Guillaume du Vair’s use of Philo occult and Christian traditions of logos merge (pp. 515-16). The ‘Renzorzstrances’, or, as Etienne Pasquier describes them, the ‘harangues que les Avocats du Roy font deux fois Van aux ouvertures g&&ales des plaidoyers, en la Cour de Parle- ment’, constitute a new genre (p. 469), of which we have some fine examples in English in the ‘Charges’ given by Francis Bacon in his capacity as Attorney- General and Solicitor General (in Spedding’s edition of Bacon’s Letters and Life). Although primarily devoted to political rhetoric, this section also includes accounts of Scaliger (pp. 452-4, regrettably brief), of ‘la souveraine intelligence de Ramus’ (pp. 4.57~60), and of Montaigne, the passing allusions

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to whose work (pp. 490, 644, 688) show an affinity that makes one wish for a

fuller study. The most striking figure in this final section is Richelieu, the politician who

set out to legitimise rhetoric (p. 612), taking his own orators with him as he came to power (p. 614), proteges whose favour oscillated according to their master’s power games (p. 627). The importance of Richelieu in this history of the institutionalisation of rhetoric is, of course, that he was responsible for the foundation of the greatest, and most lasting, of these institutions, the Acade- mie Francaise. Born as the tool of a monarchist state, the Academic is the realization of earlier humanist dreams, such as Amyot’s Projet d’une eloqu- ence royale, and is the symbol of French aspiration to the grandeur of Rome (p. 647). Its task is ‘de fixer une Idte de I’Elocution franGuise trancendant les modes et les caprices’ (p. 648), and its proponents ‘cherchent une formule capable de concilier la tradition du Palais, celle de 1’Eglise gallicane, et celle de la Cour. Ils la cherchent, mais ils ne la trouveront pas: la “rhttorique” que devait rediger 1’Academie n’a jamais vu le jour’ (p. 658). Yet, one reflects, could it ever have done? Remembering the ill-starred committee of the Royal Society, given the task of reforming the English language, it seems that only a small and relatively coherent institution can produce a unified language system. Port-Royal could produce its logic, but the Academic Francaise could not find a single, all-encompassing rhetoric. Even if it had done so, how long would it have lasted? Although this story stops in the 166Os, it was not long before rhetoric itself was to fail and to be dismantled.

Two topics dominate the general conclusion: the Jesuit ‘rhttorique des peintures’ (pp. 673-85), described somewhat unsympathetically (epideictic rhetoric, with its task of praising virtue and blaming vice, surely amounts to more than ‘l’optique grossissante de l’tloge et de la vituperation’: p. 682), and secular rhetoric. Here we note the triumph of Richelieu, cleaning up the court after 1630: ‘I1 contraint li l’exil ou il fait emprisonner, voire dtcapiter les orgueilleux chefs de file de l’individualisme feodal, qui ttaient aussi les mecbnes de la poesie et de la prose manieristes’, setting himself up as not only Maecenas of French literature but also ‘critique officiel, dictant son gout & la Cour’ (p. 693). The first recipient of his favours was Guez de Balzac, whose work forms a kind of summing-up of several strands. Balzac calls in question the ability of rhetoric to reform society: ‘ “le Monde est trop vieux, et trop endurci en ses habitudes, pour estre corrige par les belles paroles d’un Declamateur” ’ (p. 696). He admits that ‘ “les grandes chases ont besoin de l’aide des paroles” ’ (p. 697), yet laments that rhetoric too often concerns itself with trivia. Balzac’s place in French literature is briefly and respectfully sketched in, indeed he becomes something of the hero of these closing pages. The ‘musi- que des “mats”’ is said to take on ‘une dignitt philosophique’ in his prose, and a contemporary’s rather vapid praise (‘Ces divines pen&es . . .‘) is cited as a clinching argument:

On ne saurait avec plus de prCcision et de justesse mieux distinguer l’atticisme de Balzac de Ia‘rhCtorique des peintures’ jesuite et manikriste. Comme Malherbe, Balzac n’a jamais recours B I’ekphrasis autrement que sous la forme allusive de

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l’hyperbole et de la mktaphore. Pas plus que lui, il n’a eu de godt pour le pathktique dklamatoire (p. 701)

There the fastidious taste of M. Fumaroli finds more affinity than with the Jesuits. Yet it is something of a myth to imagine that Balzac and his panegyrists have gone beyond rhetoric. We are urged to read Francois Ogier’s Apologie pour M. de Balzac (1627): ‘II faut lire dam I’Apologie les analyses remarquables qui d&fir&sent l’art de la mttaphore et de l’hyperbole: “amener a la vtrite par l’exces de la verite, c’est a dire par le mensonge” ’ (p. 702). But this is only an unacknowledged borrowing from that most devious of rhetoricians, Seneca: ‘In hoc omnis hyperbole extenditur, ut ad verum mendacio veniat. . . Numquam tantum sperat hyperbole quantum audet, sed incredibilia adfirmat, ut ad credibilia perveniat’ (De Beneficiis, VII, 23). At least we can say that the rhetorical tradition had been absorbed into seventeenth-century French prose, had been fully naturalised.

IV

Summing up this vast enterprise one must pay tribute to the author’s patience, the controlled energy with which he has sifted through this mountain of books, ordering the past in its own terms, and also in ours. He seems to have a total grasp of his subject, embracing biography (see, e.g. pp. 136,392); topography - libraries, colleges, the particular milieu in Paris or in the provinces (e.g. pp. 116, 440, 472, 585), the sense of time as well as space separating provincial from the metropolitan taste, as in the comment that the success of Etienne Binet ‘seru assure apres 1630 dam les secteurs les plus provinciaux et retardataires du public franGals’ (p. 267). H e is also expert with archives (see pp. 176 and the impressive list of manuscripts consulted in Paris and Rome, pp. 70%12), and with publishing history (e.g. p. 400). M. Fumaroli is a worthy representative of the French historical tradition -we think of Lucien Febvre, Ferdinand Braudel, Hem-i-Jean Martin - which takes all cultural phenomena as potentially meaningful. He treats contemporary scholars with courtesy, allowing a harsher note to sound for the ‘nouvelle rhttorique’ of the Belgian ‘Groupe k’, who are found guilty of ‘ignorer l’histoire de la rhttorique pour en inventer une nouvelle, inutile pour l’historien et le critique, prematurte pour le linguiste’ (p. 12), and correcting Walter J. Ong politely but firmly: ‘Contrairement a ce que pretend . . . le P. Ong, Ramus veut former un orateur. I1 ne sacrifie nullement la parole agissant directement sur un public, dans le vif social, au profit de l’tcriture et de la lecture silencienses’ (p. 457). This is an important qualification of Ong’s McLuhanite thesis.

His knowledge of primary texts. manuscript and printed books must be unequalled. His reading in the secondary literature has been very wide, especially for the French and neo-Latin sources. He shows a welcome readiness to embrace Anglo-Saxon and German contributions, not always a strong point in French scholarship, but unfortunately he does not bring the same accuracy to English and German texts as to those in other languages. Morris W. Croll was never

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‘professeur a Harvard’ (p. 12): he was an undergraduate there, but his whole teaching career was at Princeton. George Williamson was never one of ‘ses &&es’, nor was he ‘professeur a Oxford’ (p. 13), but at Chicago. Jerrold E. Seigel was not a disciple of Hans Baron (p. 43), but one of his sharpest critics (see the well-known essay in Past and Present, No. 34, July 1966). A certain lack of attention applies to the spelling and typography of English: Rosamund Tuve (p. 13) instead of Rosemund; The senecan amble (ibid., and p. 57 note) should be in uppercase, as with greek (p. 260 note), and ‘french’ (p. 576). Curtius’ Europ~~che Litera~r und late~n~~he ~~~elaiter was pub~shed not in Bonn (p. 11) but in Bern; Perelman’s Christian name is not Charles (p. 29), but ChaIm. These are trivial mistakes, but in the bibliography the number of errors with English books, especially, can be seriously misleading (see Appendix). And while on the question of English, may I register a slight degree of horror at M. Fumaroli’s citation of the phrase from Henry V, ‘We few, we happy few’ - better known in France, probably, in the epigraph to Stendhal’s Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme (perhaps via Goldsmiths use of it in The Vicar of Wakefield): ‘To the happy few’ - without a definite article in either language: thus ‘de happy few’ (p. 173) and again p. 203, and ‘pour happy few’ (pp. 271, 501). A tiny solecism to spoil the elegant flow of M. Fumaroli’s prose.

Leaving such petty matters, this book must be judged a major contribution to European intellectual history. In the history of rhetoric it touches on the continuity of many traditions: the editing and commenting on Aristotle, Demetrius and other Greek critics, which seems to have continued uninter- ruptedly through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (pp. 118-21, 253, 393-4), the continuing popularity of the Church fathers (pp. 134, 554, 629, 634), even as an influence on French prose style. The rhetorical tradition is one of continuous debate, the same issues cropping up over and over again. Just to single out a few such continuities: ‘& chaque option rhetorique de quelque envergure, correspond au XVI” et aux XVII’ siecles une definition differente de [‘Orator capable de I’ussumer’ (p. 89). ‘Les conditions politiques de la “corruption de l’tloquence” telles que les decrivait Tacite duns le Dia- logue des Orateurs se sont reco~t~tut~es en France’ (p. 570); one writer affirms that the causes of the contemporary decline are not moral, as they were for Tacitus, but aesthetic (p. 622). Or, a memorable aphorism: ‘La fuusse eloquence: chaque generation a eu la sienne’ (p. 703).

As if he had not covered enough ground, the author is frequently suggest- ing new topics for research (pp. 441,526,528,549,554), or announcing future work of his own (pp. 584,698): this area of literary history is not yet finished. One last index of the book’s importance is that it ought to serve as a rebuke, and as a challenge, to students of rhetoric in other languages to attempt something comparable. The history of English rhetoric in this period, so far performed only by W. S. Howell, is an internalist history, limited to English rhetoric books, ignoring the school and university background, the inter- national neo-Latin texts used in England, and the continuing tradition of editing, commenting and teaching the major classical texts. If future scholars will be stimulated to emulate this history of rhetoric in its social and intellec- tual context, M. Fumaroli will have achieved a notable success.

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v

Reading this book is a task not to be undertaken lightly, reviewing it even less so. There were times when I wished it had been much shorter, or even published as three separate monographs. Yet in the end, and despite occa- sional longueurs, its triple structure is justified by the light that each part sheds on the others. The political part, in retrospect, is the least clearly defined, the religious and courtly sections much more successful, indeed the author shows all the flexibility of a Stendhal hero in moving between ‘the bar, the pulpit, and the crown’. Since he has identified himself so completely with his subject, the appropriate valediction might be to apply to M. Fumaroli and his work of historical recreation the affectionate admiration that he spends on one of his Jesuits, who sifted through the whole of classical antiquity to reconstitute the proper rhetoric of gesture:

Rien de plus emouvant que de voir le P. de Cressolies darts sa bibliotheque, comparant les fragments de poetes, orateurs, philosophes, theologiens de I’AntiquitC, en tirer comme des profondeurs dune cite ensevelie un geste de la main, un port de tete, un mouvement des bras, une expression du visage, une attitude, autant de morceaux dune tatue brisee qui, recomposee, resuscite la noblesse oubliee de I’aristocratie du monde. . . . Ce gout est d’ordre esthetique sans doute: mais ii renontre aussi le sens de la responsabilite de la dignitt’ morale (p. 326).

Brian Vickers Centre for Rennissance Studies Swiss Federal Institute of Te~h~~~l~gy. Ziirich

NOTES

1. R. Adolph, The Rise of Modern Prose Sty/e (Cambridge, Mass.), and B. Vickers, F~~~r~ Bacon nnd Ren~~sance Prose (Cambridge. U.K.), esp. pp. 96-140.

2. E. Norden, Die untike Kmstprosu, 2 ~01s. (Stuttgart, 1%X). esp. pp. 299-307: this work is cited in the bibliography, but hardly used.

3. U. Wilamowitz. ‘Asianismus and Atticismus’. Hermes 35 (1900). l-52.

Appendix: Errata et corrigenda

Pages 43-4, text and notes: Coluccio not Colluccio; p. 46 note: read Hakkert, not Hakkertz; p. 47 note: The classical hcritrcge md its beneficiuries (not his); p. 79 note: not reflection but reflections; p. 82 note: not Sw6lften; p. 91 note: not Bonnet Leipzig, but Bonn-Leipzig; p. 94 note: not Queller~sherniirzlmg; p. 103 note: not Bus& p. 128 note: not condwts but condtlcf; p. 162 note: not others p. 239 note: not Jesuits but Jesuz’f; p. 280 note: not Mertzlersche but Metzler; p. 298 note: initials of ‘Burns’ missing; p. 381 note: not Theophrmtean; p. 407 text: not ‘acompli’; p. 418 text: not ‘contradictons’; p. 431 note 8, line 6: not ‘his’ but ‘its’; p. 468 text: not ‘la la hierarchic’; p. 473 text: not ‘Remonstances’: p. 500 note: not ‘Rhetorics’ but ‘Rhetoric’; p. 512 note: not ‘uD Van’: p. 517: not ‘the

Reviews 437

Eloquentia’; p. 599 not: not Finck but Fink; p. 608 not John Hopkins; p. 645 note: not

Mazzea but Mazzeo. The Bibliography is enormous (pp. 707-836), containing some two thousand items, and

is very helpfully arranged, even giving shelf numbers in the Bibliotheque Nationale. However, the following errors should be noted: p. 707 “. . . and Courtauld Institutes”, not “Institute”; p. 713: not Aphtonius; p. 716: not Rhethores; p. 785, no. 838: not treatise but Treatises; p. 795, no. 980: not Panygerical, nor greek; p. 796, no. 985: not Epidiktikon; no. 993: read in the ancient (not in ancient); not greek; no. 994: not ‘Peripatetic mean of style and three stylistic characters’ but ‘The Peripatetic the three stylistic characters’; no. 995: not ‘Rhetorik’ but ‘Rhetoric’; no. 997: not Plaideih; p. 797, no. 1001: not prote-form but prose-form; no. 1003: not greek; no. 1016, the original date should be given; no. 1019: not greek greek; p. 798, no. 1026: capital letters missing; no. 1031: not an but and; p. 799: Fiske collaborated with Grant on both 1042 and 1043, not just the latter; p. 800, no. 1058: not ‘Quellensbesntitzung’; no. 1066: not historiography but autobiography; no. 1074: author’s initials missing; not Wisconsin Study of but Studies in; p. 801, no. 1083: not Balwin but Baldwin; no. 1084: not Renaissance in literary theory . . . but Renaissance literary theory. . ; no. 1087: not The classical heritage and his beneficiaries but its; this item erroneously includes two further books edited by R. R. Bolgar, the titles of which have been omitted: they should read Classical Inf7uences on European Culture A. D. 50@15GQ (Cambridge, 1971), and Classical Influences on European Culture A. D. 150~1700 (Cambridge, 1976); p. 802, no. 1091: not theophrastun; no. 1098: not ‘Rhetorics’ but ‘Rhetoric’; p. 804, no. 1124: not french; no. 1129: not Studies of Renaissance but Studies in the Renaissance; p. 805, no. 1150: not french; no. 1154: not seventeeth; no. 1157: not litteratures (English!); p. 806, no. 1160: not horatian aristotelian; no. 1167: not litterary; p. 807, no. 1177: not Mac Gowan but McGowan (again, p. 826. nos. 1527-8); nos. 1178-80: not Mac Keon but McKeon; no. 1182: not english; no. 1186: not ‘french’; no. 1192: not in Middle Ages but in the Middle Ages; no. 1193: not ‘Baton’; no. 1194: not ‘french’, nor ‘ram&‘; p. 808, nos. 1199 and 1200, books published in 1935 and 1917, are both attributed to Patterson, Annabel M. (publishing in 1970): in fact they are both by Patterson, Warner Forrest; no. 1202: not Charles Perelman but Chaim; no. 1210 (and many others): punctuation missing; p. 810, no. 1236: not to the sixteenth century rhetoric but to sixteenth century. . . ; no. 1243: not Rosamund but Rosemund; p. 811, no. 1258: not in Italian but in the Italian. ; no. 1264: not ihser Theorie but ihrer; no. 1265: not latin; p. 812, no. 1270: not french; p. 813, no. 1289: not ‘icvic’; no. 1290: not humanities but humanistic; no. 1291: not florentine; no. 1303: not french; p. 815, no. 1335: not french; p. 816, no. 1347: not english; p. 824. no. 1491: not french; p. 825, no. 1507: not french; no. 1512: not avent (?advent); p. 826, no. 1525: not John Hopkins; p. 831, no. 1632: not Mollo but Molho; p. 833, no. 1669: not french; p. 834, no. 1679: not The crisis of Aristocracy but The crt%s of the Aristocracy; p 836, no. 1715: not Longin but Longinus. Basta cosi!