Inventio

Abstract: The volume presents a cultural history of renaissance rhetoric with special emphasis on literary theory with its aspects of imagination (inventio), generictheory (dispositio), style (elocutio), mnemonic architecture (memoria), representation (actio) (with Shakespeare's works as illustrations). Special attention is given to the intermedial rhetoric of painting and music and the rhetorical ideology of culture.

Abstract: Contents: Introduction: The Sense of a Book 1. Inventio Linguae: The Language of Contingency 2. The Nameless Lover, or the Contingent Subject 3. Fortune, or The Contingent Figure 4. Through the Looking-Glass: The Knowledge of Contigency Conclusion: Diverse Verses

Abstract: This passage from The Wanderer demonstrates some of the rhetorical techniques which have been noted in Old English texts. Its most striking features are the rhetorical questions and the figure of anaphora which is produced by the repetition of ‘Hwaer’. Another rhetorical element is the use of the theme (topos) of ubi sunt (‘where are…?’) to lament the loss of past joys. In classical antiquity, features such as these, which served to create effective discourse, were the products of ars rhetorica. This art was distinguished from the more basic subject of ars grammatica in that rhetoric, the ‘ars … bene dicendi’ (Quintilian, Institutio oratoria II.xvii.37), aimed at the good production of text (for oral delivery) with the aim of persuading the listeners to take or adopt some form of action or belief, whereas grammar, the ‘recte loquendi scientia’, was responsible for correct speech and also for the interpretation of poetical texts (‘poetarum enarratio’: Quintilian, Institutio oratoria I.iv.2). In terms of classical rhetoric, the above passage from The Wanderer could be analysed according to the three phases of the production of a text (partes artis) which pertain to both written and oral discourse: inventio (finding topics such as the ubi sunt), dispositio (arranging the parts of the text) and elocutio (embellishing the text stylistically, for example with rhetorical questions and other figures and tropes).How and under what circumstances did the Anglo-Saxons acquire their knowledge of how to compose a text effectively?

Abstract: In the medieval commentary tradition, enarratio assumes a rhetorical power of discursive production. It is not mere repetition and reproduction. Rather, it contests and remakes the primary text; it can take on a kind of originary force of its own, becoming a text to be appropriated by later exegetes, to be grafted on to the primary text, and thus to change the conditions of reception for that text. The most characteristic form of this rhetorical or productive action on the text is paraphrase: exegetical paraphrase consumes or envelops the text and can remake the text on many levels, from style to structure to conceptual orientation. This defining characteristic of Latin hermeneutical practice carries over into the emergent tradition of vernacular commentary. Vernacular textual exegesis builds upon the model supplied by learned Latin precedent. But in vernacular commentary of the Latin auctores , the process of textual paraphrase is also an act of interlingual translation. Thus in some of its most important forms from its earliest history to its later development, vernacular translation maintains strong affinities with established exegetical practice. The association between Latin and vernacular exegesis is very close, and this association has profound implications for our understanding of vernacular translation from the Latin auctores . But before we turn to a consideration of vernacular texts, it will be helpful to offer some preliminary observations on the historical relationship between hermeneutics and translation, and to provide a theoretical model for classifying the kinds of translations to be treated here and in later chapters.