ABSTRACT
The chapter focuses on Vives’s re-evaluation of the optimistic interpretation of rhetoric central for the Erasmian movement in his monumental De disciplinis (1531). It interprets De disciplinis as a criticism of the discursive culture of the time (a culture of invectives made possible by the printing press). By combining analyses of Vives’s history of rhetoric, the parts and aims of rhetoric, and the place of rhetoric in the educational path, the chapter argues two things. First, with a sensitivity to the destructive possibilities of rhetoric and in contrast to the optimism of Erasmus’s works on rhetorical education (e.g. De ratione studii, De conscribendis epistolis, De copia), Vives conceptually delimited rhetoric and restricted the role of rhetorical confrontation in education. Second, the chapter argues that Vives’s redefinition of rhetoric was not an attack on the art of eloquence but an attempt to redefine rhetoric so that it could achieve its social and political role. This rhetoric avoided open confrontation and strong passions but managed discord without making confrontation visible. It was not rhetoric between citizens but rhetoric of counsel.
