ABSTRACT
The introduction argues that Vives should be given a prominent place in the intellectual history of Northern Humanism due to his original interpretation of the civic aspect of rhetoric. While much work exists on the spiritual dimension of Northern Humanist rhetoric, we know relatively little about the civic potential of eloquence in the Erasmian circles. The chapter sustains that this dimension is visible in Vives’s oeuvre in three ways. First, much of his political literature can be analysed as political acts, which brings forth its critical and performative dimension in a novel way. Second, his appropriation of classical rhetoric was driven by an urge to adapt political rhetoric into a changed, largely monarchic world in which direct speech was an impossibility and decorum was needed. Third, his interest in rhetoric partly motivated his analysis of the soul and emotions in De anima et vita, which can be seen as a continuation of his concerns with language and persuasion. The introduction also argues for an interdisciplinary and chronological approach to Vives, which allows us to see individual works both as situated answers to specific questions and as an attempt to connect specific interventions to a larger interpretive framework.
