Exam 6: Rhetoric in Christian Europe

Letters during the Middle Ages were expected to be read aloud to an audience, and therefore were constructed with a focus on rhythm and sound in order to appeal to the ear.

Comment on the contribution of Martianus Capella's The Marriage of Philology and Mercury to medieval thinking about education in general, and education in rhetoric in particular. Which classical rhetorical theorist had the most important influence on the presentation of rhetoric in Capella?

The art of _________________, which dealt with dictamen, was extensive during the later Middle Ages, and was incredibly important to civic, commercial, and clerical life.

St. Augustine's _________________, is his major work on rhetoric, worked as a guide to preaching, and has been called the most influential book in the tradition of humanistic rhetoric.

What for St. Augustine were the two major functions of rhetoric within the Church?

Which of the following was the name for the isolated statements from ancient authors, such as Aristotle, that were used for teaching in medieval education but lost their original meaning without proper context?

What specific functions did the art of letter writing perform in medieval European culture?

What was the goal of preaching as a rhetorical art in the Middle Ages?

Despite evidence of a shift from speech to writing during the period, rhetoric in the Middle Ages often involved speaking. Does writing play a more important social role today than does speaking? What important changes take place as a culture moves from oral to written expression?

In what ways were adaptations of classical rhetoric used to maintain the hierarchical structure of medieval Europe? From your study of classical and medieval rhetoric, does it seem to you that rhetorical theory is often used to maintain existing social orders?

Because most of the rhetorical secretaries in the Middle Ages were female, most letters in this era had a distinctly feminine style to which male scribes had to conform.

Provide the English names for the three rhetorical arts that developed in Europe during the period 1100 to 1300.

Which of the following attributes of rhetoric posed a problem for Augustine when trying to describe and talk about God?

_________________ said, "For since by means of the art of rhetoric both truth and falsehood are urged, who would dare say that truth should stand in the person of its defenders unarmed against lying?" and argued that those who served the truth needed rhetoric because people who lie would also be using it.

In The Marriage of Philology and Mercury the quadrivium consisted of the three fundamental studies of grammar, rhetoric, logic.

In what specific way did Boethius perpetuate an element of the classical tradition found in writers like Cicero?

__________________ was the intellectual movement that became dominant in the Middle Ages that implemented a closed and authoritarian approach to education centered on disputing a fixed body of premises derived from Aristotle.

Which of the following was the widely circulated manual on poetry written by Geoffrey of Vinsauf, which detailed a technique called conversio?

Why are the Middle Ages considered a period of fragmentation in rhetorical theory?

Provide the term for the following definitions: -In medieval preaching theory, a biblical text that provided the basis for developing a sermon.