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Rhetoric and Humanism in Quattrocento Venice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Virginia Cox
Virginia Cox*
Affiliation:
New York University
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Abstract

This essay examines the development of humanistic rhetoric in fifteenth-century Venice, taking as its starting point a remark of Ermolao Barbaro's on the inadequacy of academic rhetorical instruction as a preparation for the practical oratorical skills necessary to Venetian civic life. It is argued that the context of Barbaro's remark is a series of humanistic polemics on rhetoric that took place in Venice and Padua in the latter decades of the Quattrocento, culminating in the famous debate of the 1490s on the authenticity of the Rhetorica ad Herennium. As the essay shows, a consideration of these debates reveals the way in which local, contextual factors inflected the development of humanistic rhetorical culture in Italy, the key factor here being the continuing importance in republican Venice of a live tradition of deliberative debate.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , Autumn 2003 , pp. 652 - 694
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2003

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