ABSTRACT
My aim in this paper is to persuade you that Rudolph Agricola (1444-85) was one of the major theorists of rhetoric, someone whose ideas we still need to take account of as well as someone who made a significant contribution to the development of rhetorical theory.1 In the past Agricola has been underrated. Historians of rhetoric have tended to exclude him from consideration because his most famous work, De inventione dialectica (completed 1479; first printed 1515) appears to be a work on dialectic (which in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was almost a synonym for logic), whereas historians of logic thought that he betrayed logic by making it rhetorical (Agricola).2 We must set this disciplinary rivalry to one side. In the Renaissance, logic and rhetoric were taught together. In literature and composition departments today, we aim to teach people to read critically, to argue, and to write. Agricola is a great example to us in putting these concerns together.
