ABSTRACT
Throughout its long career, rhetoric has been put to the most diverse uses. Origi nally called on to codify speeches in legal disputes, adapted by the Greeks and Romans for both legal and civic uses, moving from the law court to the forum and thence to the schoolroom, it permeated many areas of medieval culture and experienced a full-scale revival in the Renaissance.1 In the four centuries since then it has been applied to all literary genres, to architecture, painting, music, and dance, to acting and singing, and to such unlikely practices as double-entry
'For the history of rhetoric see, for instance, G. Kennedy, The Art o f Persuasion in Greece (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963); G. Kennedy, The Art o f Persuasion in the Roman World (300 BC-AD 300) (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972); G. Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1980); G. Kennedy, Greek Rhetoric Under Christian Emperors (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983); J. J. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages. A History of Rhetorical Theory from St. Augustine to the Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974); J. J. Murphy, ed., Medieval Eloquence. Studies in the Theory and Practice o f Medieval Rhetoric (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); J. J. Murphy, ed., Renaissance Eloquence. Studies in the Theory and Practice o f Renaissance Rhetoric (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); M. Fumaroli, VA ge de Veloquence. Rhetorique et “res literaria” de la Renaissance au seuil de Vepoque classique (Geneva: Droz, 1980); P. France, Rhetoric and Truth in France. Descartes to Diderot (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972); J. Dyck, Ticht-Kunst. Deutsche Barockrhetorik und rhetorische Tradition (Bad Homburg: Gehlen, 1966); H. Schanze, ed., Rhetorik. Beitrage zu ihrer Geschichte in Deutschland vom 16.-20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt: Athenaion, 1974); P. W. K. Stone, The Art o f Poetry 1750-1820. Theories o f Poetic Composition and Style in the Late Neo-Classic and Early Romantic Periods (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967).
