ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the session 'Defining the Middle Ages as an Object of Study' at the annual meeting of the Medieval Academy of America, Austin, Texas. Medievalists who study the history of rhetoric often have found themselves defending the importance, if not establishing the existence, of their subject. For most historians of rhetoric, the European Middle Ages have been what the American Middle West is for most airline passengers: 'fly-over country'. Courses that survey the Western rhetorical tradition and, the texts used in teaching such courses, have tended to ignore the medieval period. In practice, classical rhetoric, like medieval rhetoric, encompassed both oral and written discourse and permeated a broader range of social practices than those enumerated in the treatises devoted specifically to the discipline itself. The boundary between medieval rhetoric and humanist rhetoric also is more permeable than some would allow a fact that becomes clear in the recent scholarship that focuses on the diversity of humanist rhetoric itself.
