Schoolbooks, Libros escolares y retórica. El caso de la Copia de Erasmo. 1991.pdf

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THOMAS O . SLOANE

SchoolbooksandRhetoric: Erasm us'sCopia

he his toryof rhetorichasa lways been entw ined wi ththehis tory of educat ion . Indeed, what passed for rhetoricinanyoneper iod us ua l ly dep en de d u pon w ha t pas sedfor itin the classroom, or in the groves of academe. Someof the mostinfluential books on rhetor ic today areas they have alwaysbeens choo lbooks . The classroom is t h u s , a kind of case s tudyforthehistorianwhoseekstodetermine w hat rhe toricwas oris ,orfor the s t u d e n t who w o n d e r s w h a t it yet can be. Pedagogy is aproving ground in our efforts to learn something about rhetor ic 'spas t or to assess its present . Li t t le wonder , then, that the greatschoolbooks in our his tory have been read in lightof the uses towhich they have been put however d i spara te those usesmay befrom therhetor ictheboo ks wou ld teach. Caseinpoin tis one of themost widely used and popular t ex tbooksin theRenaissance: E rasm u s ' s Decopia,his famous effort to revive classical rhetoric andmakeitpalatable to schoolboys .Published f irs t in 1512 the book was revised and enlarged atleast thricein Erasmus 's l i fe t ime. Though wri t ten os tens iblyat theprompt ing of John C olet, d ea n of St. Paul 's school in L o n d o n , itapparently fil led a pervas ive pedagogica l need , not only in England but th rou gh ou t No r the rn Europe , and cont inued to do solong af ter Erasmus 's death.For oneth ing , copiousness is a s ign

The International Society for the Historyof Rhetoric Rhetorica, VolumeIXNu mb e r2(S prin g 1991)

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Erasmus's Copia 115George K en ne dy ' s r emark tha t A l though Erasmus knew thor oughly the whole system of classical rhetoric, the only part of thediscipline to w hich h e m a d e a major contr ibuH on wa s s tyle . Butthere i s l it tle just if ication for K en ne dy 's subse qu ent r e m a r k -thoug h it is a cus to m ary v iew that Erasm us w as actively inter ested in s tyle for i ts ow n s a k e . ' E ras m us 's interest in s tyle should beund ers too d, I pro po se, in l ight of w ha t he actuallydoes with style.^The Toronto translat io n, w hic h I ci te thro ug ho ut this piece, gives it at i t le which seems to accord wi th El izabethan use and modern neglect:FoundationsoftheAbundan t Style, h is easy, p e rh a p s too easy, toatic drill should cease with Chap. XXXIII, the end of the theory of applied elocutio(II, 179).'George A. Kennedy,Classical Rhetoricand its Christian andSecular TraditionfromAncient to Modem Times (Chapel Hill, 1980), 205-206. Kennedy is my example of theusual posi t ion taken by modern historians of rhetoric. Walter Ong character izes theDe copiaalong w ith sev eral of Eras m us 's wo rks as part icipating in a general que st forcopia,which he describ es as a m ak e-u p progra m for fluency in Latin; Rhetoric,Romance, andTechnology (Ithaca, 1971),30-31 . Edward P.J. C orb ett in his brief su rve yof history states that Erasmus in the second part of Decopiaoffers instru ction in theuse of topics (inventio) for the purposes of expressive variat ion;Classical Rhetoric forthe Modern Student (New York, 1965), 546. For Sister Joan Marie Lechner, Erasmiancopiamean s making them es amp le and verbose ;Renaissance ConceptsoftheCommonplaces (New York, 1962), 178. One could group with these the historians who sl ightthe work while acknowledging i ts importance: see the brief mentions by HelmutSchanze, who believes that Erasmus systemaHzed classical rhetoric for students,and byW.Keith Percival , wh o believes that E rasm us closely associated rhetoric withgrammaHcal form, in Renaissance Eloquence, ed. James J. Murphy (Berkeley, 1983),118,329; or Wilbur Sa m ue l H ow ell 's link age of the wo rk to English boo ks on figuresand tropes, in Logic and Rhetoric in E ngland, 1500 -1700 (Prin ceto n, 1956), 131, 137.There are, of course, excepHons to the usual posi t ions or sl ights: Ong's commentthat Era sm us offers a rheto rical ap pro ac h to life is on e, tho ug h On g is not specifically referring to the De copia( in R amus, Method, and the Decay ofDialogue[Cambridge, Mass., 1958], 291); Baldwin is an excepHon; so, too, is Conley (see n. 5below). Erasmian scholars and biographers tend to offer readings closer to my own:see Cave (n. 11 belo w); or Richard S choeck , ErasmusGrandescens (Niewkoop, 1988),99; or Johan Huizinga, Erasmus and the Age ofReformation(first p u b. 1924; repr intNew York, 1957), 114-15.

But one could also read what he actually said about style, as for example in oneof his let ters to Bude, in which he takes direct opposihon to Quinti l ian 's l iking ofstyle for its ow n s ake a nd stat es an in tere st on ly in that style which is efficacious forrecommending i ts subject . See TheCorrespondenceof Erasmus, trans. R. A. B. Mynorsand D. F. S. Th om so n, an no tate d by James K. McConica (Toronto, 1977; CollectedWorksof Erasmus [hereafter cited as CWE], vol. 4), 230-34.Trans, and annotated by Betty I . Knott in CWE, vol . 24 (Toronto, 1978), 279-

659. A better t rans lat ion of the t it le is Th om as Con ley's: O n Fullness of Expression . Co nley insightfu lly calls th e w ork a treatise de sig ne d to inculcate linguisticsensit ivi ty and f luency, which would enable speakers or writers not only to achieve



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116 R H E T O R I C Aread the work as a compendium of schoolroom exercises on s impleverbal variety, or abundance, or even as a kind of work primari ly(rather tha n ini tially) on rhetorica l s tyle: Recall the fam ou s pa ssag ein w hich E ras m us gives 147 varia t ions of the sen ten ce , Your let terpleased me very m u ch , or his famo us s tatem en t of his inten t ions ,to give s tu de nts the reso urce s to tu rn one idea into m ore sh ap esthan Proteus himself i s supposed to have turned into. *

Proteus as an emblem of copiousness seems meaningful . Hew a s , after all , the very god of versatil i ty.^ But Proteus as an emblemof Erasmus 's invent ive method seems less precise. Exact ly howdoes one achieve var iety, abundance, and versat i l i ty? Concentrat ing on the f igure of Proteus , the god who was so adept a t changinghis shape , one might as sume tha t the answer i s through saying thesame thing in di f ferent ways . But there i s a deeper wel lspr ing, am etho d a t w ork inDe copiaas in all of Era sm us 's w ri t ings o n rh etorical pedagogy that has l i t t le to do wi th the s imple procedures ofs ynonymy, verba, an d ev eryth ing to do wi th res,the very p rod uc t ofthe mul t i far ious but a lso heur is t ic and not inf requent ly scornedcenter of classical rhetoric, inventio, or how to think in a certain wayabout what you ' re doing when you crea te d i scourse .

In the mos t genera l sense , Erasmus ' s invent ive method i s themethod of speech-making, the pr inciples , that i s , of target ing one 'sdiscourse for a specif ic audience and occasion. There are manysubsidiary methods inside this general one; as a matter of fact ,Erasm us li st s som e eleven su bs idiary m eth od s in the seco nd pa r t ofDe copia. But of the se I shal l conc en trate on on e in part icular , afeature in Era sm us wh ich ha s bee n neglected not only by h is tor iansbut by m od ern e duc ators as wel l:controversia, set t ing ideas into p roan impressive abil i ty to say the same things in different ways but to have at theirdisposal a fund of expressions that could be tapped according to the si tuationaldemands they migh t encoun te r [Rhetoric in theEuropean Tradition [New York, 1990],120). KTWE, vol. 24, 348-54 and 302.

'A. Bart let t Giamatt i , in his famous survey of the f igure of Proteus in Renaissance tho ug ht, f inds the figure signifying m an 's abili ty to ad ap t an d to act m anyroles ena bling him to as su m e the bu rd en s of civil izat ion, to create ci ties on earthand win c i t izenship am on g the imm orta ls ; Prote us Unb oun d: Some Versions ofthe Sea-God in the Ren aissance , in The Disciplines of Criticism: Essays in LiteraryTheory, Interpretation, and History, eds. George Demetz , Thomas Greene, Wil l iamNelson (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1968), 439. Erasmus's own casual and tosom e eyes sho ckin g reference to Ch rist as Pr ote us is also not i r relevan t{Ratio veraetheologiae [Basel , 1518], 214), for variety or diversi ty was fundamental to Erasmus'spoint .



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Erasmus's Copifl 117and con debate , matching asser t ion wi th counterasser t ion, themethod Cicero cal led argumentum incontrariaspartes,or in utramquepartem.^

For this the f igure of Janus may be a bet ter emblem, the godwho looks in two di rect ions at once. Indeed, the Renaissanceab ou nd s in references to Jan us as the em blem of a pe rso n, usu ally askeptic, who can see both s ides of any quest ion. ' The s tructure ofErasmus's famous schoolbook itself seems Janus-faced. The firstpar t looks tow ard s tyle , the seco nd tow ard inve nt ion; and the bookalso teaches, in its unfolding, that the versatil i ty of copiainheresless in l inguist ic abundance and more in the mental agi l i ty i t takesto confront r ichness of language and thought , as in mental ly looking in two direct ions at once. Indeed, one could, at some r isk(know ing well tha t 'Tis no t for every ma n to go to C orin th ) , pu tthe mat ter in our contemporaneous terms, and argue that a carefulreading of the work shows that Erasmus buil t into i ts s tructureovert m ea ns for i ts dec on struc t ion . For the ostensible s implicity ofthe first part is challenged if not undercut by the principles of thesecond.

Ul timately, how ev er , th e bes t and leas t mis leading contem poranei ty i s surely Erasmus 's : one should s imply employ his own descript ion and say that the Decopia is s truc ture d in a clever w aype rh ap s, as h e rightly feared , to o clever to be un d er sto od b y all .' It

'See De oratore.1.158 a n d 3.107; Orator46;ad inf. Conley in discussing Cicero 'sunion of oratory, philosophy, and statesmanship character izes controversia as adialogue in which practical or philosophical formulations are si tuated in divergentframes of reference, brought into conflict in debate, and tested for their respectiveclaims of probabilitas {37).'Thomas Browne, for example , wr i t ing as a young medical s tudent inReligioMedici, calls the wise st h ea ds thos e w h o, almo st all Sceptiks [,] stand likeJanusinthe field of kn ow led ge (ed. L. C. M artin [1964], 66). No t only skepticism bu t alsoprudence i s connected to the Janus emblemprudence as a middle posi t ion between two extremes, whether of t ime or of argument: though Victoria Kahn doesnot express p ru de nc e in term s of the Janu s hea ds , one of her central images , Tit ian 'sAllegoryof Prudence,contains the Janus he ads; Rhetoric, Prudence, andSkepticismin theRermissance(Cornell, 1985). A disc uss ion of the em blem atic role of Janu s in rhetoricalinventio is in Th om as O. Sloane, Donne, Milton, and the End of Hum anist Rhetoric(Berkeley, 1985), 57-63 .' Erasmus, in writing to Bude, claimed to agree with the tatter 's dislike of Decopia, in spite of the fact tha t oth ers ha ve foun d it not only useful but clever. Evennow teachers [literatores]in m an y places co mp lain that the w ork is too clever[argutius] to be un de rsto od by readers of mo derate a t ta inm ents CWE, vol. 4 , 106;Opera Omnia, III/I: 214(A).



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118 R H E T O R I C Ais also the best descript ion because, as I shal l argue later , i t bothsuggests a possible source of the book's rhetorical fai lure and, tore turn to my opening argument , invi tes a new reading of th i s h i s tor ical ly most impor tant document . For Erasmus, in claiming thathis book is c lever , w as ad dre ss in g a f requent ne ed l ing that hespent too much t ime in t r ivial pursui ts , l ike wri t ing elementaryscho olbo oks . Part of his cle ve rne ss, I shal l sug ge st , l ies in thebook's use of a pervas ive controversia,wh ich in becom ing increas ingly explici t may f inal ly reveal Erasmus 's deepest intention.

Baldwin with his usual acuteness saw the f irs t part of Erasmus ' s book as a work on elocutio, the second as a work on inventio(1.25, e.g.). My own interpretat ion di f fers f rom his , though lessradical ly than from others I ci te, in that I see Decopia as ul t imatelycenteringo n inventio, a center ing which accounts for i t s s t ructure.The invent ion which Erasmus t eaches i s one which i s profoundlyoral and controvers ial in nature: the kind of discourse in which thebook's pr inciples culminate , as shown in i t s conclus ion, i s oratory,particularly forensic oratory. But the effects of orality andcontrover-siaare ub iqu i tou s , textural ly as wel l as s tructural ly for Erasmiantheory, as Terence C av e h as incisively rem ar ke d, te n d s to ena ct (orperform) the very pr inc ip les it en un cia tes .

For example, Erasmus 's f i r s t move in the book is to ta lk aboutthe da ng er s of s t udy in g cop ious nes s a good adver t is i ng mo ve ,part icularly useful in the classroom by teachers of l i t t le boys, but i tis also a clear indicat ion of a certain pervasive rhetorical pr inciple:one should offer no brief for any subject without allowing for i tspossible refutat ion. Similar ly, Erasmus argues, early in the book aswell as in i ts conclusion, the curious posi t ion that copia is also theway tobrevityall on e ne ed s to learn are the pr in ciple s , for theyare the sam e in bo th . At least on e of those p r inciples , I am t rying toargue , i s tha t any mat terasser t ion or qual i tyalways sugges t sthe presence of i t s opposi te , a pr inciple that (however much i tdoes , or does not , r esemble modern decons t ruc t ion) i s the cont rovers ial hear t and soul of Erasmus 's unders tanding of t radi t ionalrhetoric.This pr inciple may i t sel f be the mot ive of Erasmus 's widelyr e m a r k e d p e n c h a n t i n s u c h w o r k s a s De contemptu mundi and thePraise of Follyfor irony, for the volte-face, or even for a self-

Terence Cave, TheCornucopianText:Problemsof Writing in theFrench Renaissance(Oxford, 1979), xiv.



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Erasmus'sCopia 119consuming s t ructure. In the present case, the penchant i s gl impsedfirst in the joke Erasmus seems to have built into the full t i t ie of thisbook:De duplicicopiaverborum ac rerumcommentariiduo(the twofoldcopia of words and arguments in a double commentary) . The t i t leis ov erd on e. I t is w ord y, verbal ly o ve rab un da nt . So, too, is the firstpar t, or com m entary , on w ord s (verborum),w hich offers instru ctionin s imple verbal vary ing , through such means as synonyms andfigures of speech; and the examples are tiresome, including the 147var iat ions of the s tate m en t Your le tter pleased me very m uc h andthe im m edia tely fol lowing 203 variat ion s of A lwa ys, as long as 1live, I shal l re m em be r yo u . But the re is less i rony here than pu rpose. For Erasmus consciously overdid the f irs t part , with a nodtoward Quinti l ian's instruct ions for the young: i t is bet ter to workwith a boy who has an over ly exuberant express ion than one whohas an impoverished style (part 1, chap. 4) . The second part , orcommenta ry , on a rgument s (rerum), i s somewhat more methodological, aim ed at w h a t tod ay we wo uld call cr it ical thin kin g.What the f irs t commentary would offer by way of instruct ion insimple verbal variety, the second commentary would cal l into quest ion. Here we move away f rom a concentrat ion on words andtoward an absorpt ion wi th the arguments which are bom of aninvent ive mind.

Here, too, in this second commentary we f ind, of course, theuse of top ics , the tradi t iona l pla ce s of inv entio n (e.g.,an alyze astatem ent, suc h as he is a total m on ste r by break ing it into parts :he is a monster in mind as well as body), features of classicalrhetoric crucial in his torical s tudies and of ongoing importance inm ode rn theory.'^ But he re, too , in this second c om m entary w e alsofind the suggested applicat ion of controversiaas an app roach toinvent ion , in methods t en and e leven. Any method (ratio),more over, usually overlaps another , as do most divis ions and categoriesthroughout the book, but even in thei r over lapping they show thatsomething more than a topical sys tem of invent ion is a t work.

One of Erasmus 's examples in method ten i s very much to thepoint of my argument . For here he shows the rhetor ical ease wi thwhich one can argue ei ther s ide of a quest ion. In this example, he'2See, for example, Michael C.Leff The Topics of Arg um entat iv e Inv ention in

Latin Rhetorical Theory from Cicero to Boethius, Rhetorica1 (1983): 23 -44 ; M arcCo gan, R od olp hu s Agricola an d the Sem antic Rev olutions of the History of Invention, Rhetorica 2 (1984): 163-94; an d D on ova n J. Oc hs, Cicero and PhilosophicInventio, Rhe torical Society Qua rterly19 (1989): 217-27.



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120 R H E T O R I C Agoes to some length to explain how the schoolboy might argueagainstlearning Greek: i t can be an obs tacle in at ta inin g Ch r is t ianhappiness, i t 's so difficult that a l ifetime is insufficient for i ts mastery, and those who study i t seem to suffer the fate of the overthrown and oppressed Greeks . The example concludes by sugges t ing that the schoolboy might ar range these arguments in cl imact ics tyle , much as Lucian had done in a declamat ion which, Erasmusnotes , he had himself recentiy t ranslated from the Greek into Latin.The f inal tongue-in-cheek suggest ion t ips off Erasmus 's own position, if it w ere n ot already w ell e n o u g h k n o w n to his rea de rs (ei therthrough his fame or through the ins t ruct ion in par t 1 , chapter 9 ,that knowledge of Greek adds great ly tocopia),jus t as the exam pleitself tips off oneveryclear principleat w ork in the Decopia or for thatmat ter in Erasmus 's rhetor ical invent ion: don' t take anything,whether i t ' s the value of s tudying Greek or the value of learningcopia, uncri t ical ly. Everything should be controversial ized.

The dep th an d reach of Era sm us ' s un de rs ta nd ing of th i s pr inc i ple can be gl impsed by juxtapos ing his textbook wi th some documents he would have known. According to Ar i s to t l e (Rhetoric1.1),a prime similar i ty between rhetoric and dialect ic is that each generates arguments indi f ferent ly on both s ides of the ques t ion; indeed,Cicero claims (in Orator 46) tha t Ar is tot le tau gh t his s tu de nt s toa rgue in utramque partemno t after the crabb ed m an ne r of the ph ilosophers but af ter the copious manner of the rhetors (seda dcopiamrhetorum). In the antecedent t radi t ion, P lato 's Phaedrus itself h a dserved as the premier document for pro and con argumenta t ionas Erasmus wel l real ized when he advised boys to wri te le t ters proand con, us ing the orat ions of Socrates and Lysias as thei r mode l s . Cicero ' s own mas terp iece , a cent ra l document in the humanis t revival , w as a con sciou s imitat ion of thePhaedrus,h is Deoratore,in which i t i s assumed that pro and con argumentat ion is a t thehear t of rhetor ic , a mat ter never in dispute by ei ther of the dial ogue ' s two an t agon i s t s , Cras s us and Anton ius .

M oreover , in the t radi t ion of rhetor ical declam at ion de sce nd ingfrom Cicero, Seneca, and Aphtonius , one f inds a cer tain over lapping of controversiaa n d suasoria. N ot n ecessari ly t he resu lt of aconc eptual u nt id ine ss on the pa r t of c lass ical rhetor ician s , the o verlapping could just as easi ly be a ref lect ion that a wil l ingness to

S e e Deconscribendisepistolis,c h a p . 11 ;CW E, vol . 25, 44.These passages in De oratoresho uld substa nt ia te the argum en t in my s ta tement :1.158 2.102-4, 3.69-74, 3.80.



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Erasmus'sCopia 123recent centuries: part icularly in America, debate has had l i t t le rolein modern rhetor ical theory and vi r tual ly no role in the moderncomposi t ion classroom, to the impover ishment of our theor ies ofinventio.^'' Th ou gh pedagog ica l concerns lie som ew hat beyond myscope in this essay, they are necessarily related to our historicalunderstanding, to our fai lure to learn the lesson in at least onegreat schoolbook by neglect ing to read i t rhetorical ly. Two recenthistories , both sensi t ive to the close connections of rhetoric andeducation, further i l lustrate my point .

Brian Vickers 'sInDefenseofRhetoricha s be en we ll pra ised for itscomplex sum m ar y of classical o r ig in s. It is pe rh ap s m ost s ignif icant that in this su m m ary he central izes educat ional problem s. Thatcentral ization is , of cou rse , n o gu ara nte e of accuracy: his com plaint ,for example (p. 36) , that Cicero botched Deoratore by failing to accede to the impulse (which Vickers f inds evident in the work) toproduce a handbook, is clearly contradicted not only by Cicero'sow n prefacing co m plain t abo ut the insuff iciency of his earlier ha nd book, De inventione, which he produced at the age of nineteen, butalso by his equ ally ev ide nt im pu lse to educ ate th e real as well as theideal orator through means that l ie well beyond the l imits of anym ere han db oo k. M ost nota bly V ickers f inds C icero failing in an areawhich he, Vickers , regards as the very sine qua non of rhetoric: heneglected to give the trope s an d figures the detai l they dese rve(p. 38).I t is l i t t ie wonder, then, that , in continuing his his tory throughmedieval f ragm en tat ion to Re naissance reintegrat ion , Vickerslocates an a ch iev em en t of the lat ter period in i ts real izat ion that thetropes an d f igures are no t s im ply orn am en ts but effective m ove rs ofthe passions, sui table for an act ive role in rhetoric 's renewed function, per su as ion . Th us , the Renai s sance pu rsue delocutiow i th enorm ou s zes t (p. 283). M edieval f ragm entat ion app arent iy do es notsignify, for Vickers, the virtual disappearance of rhetoric as a modeof tho ug ht , no r do es Re naissanc e reintegrat ion s ignify the returnof the five C icer on ian ar ts, let alo ne a re-centralizing ofinventioat th eheart of rhetorical op era t ion s. Th e key to the tw o perio ds, for Vick-

The classroom neglect of inventio is a theme of Rhetoric and Praxis, ed. JeanDietz (Washington, DC, 1986); see also Robert J. Connors, Lisa S. Ede, and AndreaA. Lunsford, eds. . Essays on Classical Rhetoric and M odern Discourse (Carbondale,1984); and Tho m as O . Sloan e, Re inve nting inventio, in College English51 (1989):461-73.'^Oxford, 1989. See the review by Arthur J. Quinn in Rhetorica 7(1989): 291 -94 .



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124 R H E T O R I C Aers , seems to l ie in a functional view of f igurat ive language. Thus,though he discusses at cons iderable length the character is t ics ofRenai s sance school ing , Erasmus ' s Decopia is only l ightiy t reated, a

seminal w or k on ampl i fication, he calls i t, f rom w hic h s tu de nt sw ou ld gra du ate to the li st of f igures in Su sen bro tus 's pop ula rcollection Epitome Troporum ac Schematum . . .01 in Ad Herennium, Book4(p. 258).V ickers 's de fen se of rhe toric is an apo logy for f igures an dtropes : I t i s t rue that rhetor ic as a w ho le netw ork of relat ions hipsand p roc ed ure s is no w avai lable only to tho se w h o recon s t ruct it bys tudy, but the express ive funct ion of the f igures remains , whether

or no t as pa rt of a larger sy ste m (p. 433). T ho ug h he obv iouslysees , to a greater extent than many previous his tor ians , the importance of the his tory of education in wri t ing a his tory of rhetoric, hispursuit of a s ingular thesis may account for his faul t ing Cicero ands l ight ing Erasmus. For pedagogical ly and rhetor ical ly the Decopias tan ds close to Cicero 's Deoratore. Both share the view that rhetoricis no less complex an under taking than educat ion i t sel f i s . Bothagree that rhetoric 's inventional process is reducible to l i t t le systemat iz ing beyond such fundamenta l opera t ions asdisputatio in utramque partem. And the diff icul ty of teaching rhetoric is further compounded , i n bo th Deoratorea n d Decopia,by th e nec essi ty to teachthe im por tance of hold ingallt r u t h sprovisionally: thu s t he Deoratoreby des ign f rus t rates the seeker af ter handbooks; and the De copiaequal ly confounds any ( late medieval ) sys temat izer wi th i t s divi s ions and categories that are f luid and that are often not subordinate but disparate par ts of an apparent ly indef inable whole. Cicero 's dialog ue en d s w i th a discu ss ion of s tyle; E rasm us 's enterp r isebegins with s tyle. Both center in inventioand bo th document sinvi te an of ten dispi r i t ing contras t between the authors ' intent ionsand the uses to which the documents have been, and cont inue tobe, put .Barbara Bauer 's s t imulat ing s tudy of developments in rhetor icin the seventeenth century concent ra tes on cur r icula and peda

gogues. She traces the flowering of the Jesuitical ars rhetoricaa n d i tst ransformat ion of the humanis t ideal of e loquence. Her scope is ,t h u s , nar rower than Vickers ' s and more focused , and her r eadingof Decopiam uch m ore in tens ive . I l lum inat ing as her a rg um en t i s, iti s nonetheless hampered in i t s res t r ic t ive view of what she accurately selected as the central document in the cons t ruct ion of thehum ani s t idea l , E ras m us ' s Decopia. Erasmus ' s in tent ion , she f inds ,i s essent ial ly conservat ive and ornamental , the product ion of a



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Erasmus'sCopia 125somewhat expans ive copiousness which recons t ruc ted the medi evalelocutio for the rather more at t ic e loquence of humanism.Erasm us ' s w ork , she s ta tes , s t an ds on the thresho ld be tw eentwo pe riod s: Sti ll in familiar m ediev al raim en t , which gives almo stexclusive preference to figural and tropical exornatioan dam plifica-tio,Era sm us com pi led exercises in s tyli st ic exam ples and m etho dical pieces of advice. These nevertheless served a new humanist icideal ofelegantia, sp eec h vd th an at tic c larity wh ich did not d ep en dup on an ar ra ng em en t swo l len w i th f igures of s ty le . In Baue r 'sview, the narrowness of medieval textbooks is exceeded in the f irs tpar t of Erasmus 's book through his conger ies of paraphrases andcircumlocutions and in the second, possibly under the influence ofAgricola, through his detai led suggest ions for the use of commonplaces as a means of assembling parables , al legories , and antiquemodels of style.^o Erasmus, states Bauer, had no particular interestin reforming rhetorical theory. His li t t le interest along these lines,as m eas ure d by the sor t of Ro m an rhetor ic pro po sed by Crassusand Antonius in Cicero 's Deoratore,is sh o w n by his readine ss toinclude Geoffrey of Vinsauf a long side H orace and Q uinti l ian in theranks of rhetorical masters . ^ ' I t was, in sum, less his pedagogy(Lehrmethode) which made Erasmus a representa t ive of humanis trhetoric than his service as a conduit of classicism.

Bauer 's reading is excellent as far as i t goes. But i t doesn't goquite far enough, and I bel ieve mislocates the irony at i ts center:Erasmus, who seems caught up in the medieval love of ornament .

Barbara Bauer, lesuitische 'ars rhetorica' im Zeitalter derGlaubenskdmpfe (Frankfurt, 1986), 122: E ra sm us ' 'C op ia' steht an de r Schw elle zw isch en den m ittelalter-l ichen 'Artes dictaminis ' bzw. Poetiken und der neuzeit l ichen humanist ischenRhetorik. . . . No ch im ve rtra ute n m ittelalterlichen G ew an de , da s fast ausschliefilichdie figurale und h-opische exornatio und amplificatio beriicksichtigte, trug Erasmussti l ist ische Ubungsbeispiele und methodische Ratschlage zusammen, die der Ver-wirklichung eines gleichwohl neuen humanist ischen elegantia-Ideals einer at t ischklaren, nicht durch f iguralen tumor verunstal teten Rede dienten.2P. 124: A uch d as zwe ite Buch, in de m E rasm us mog licherweise unter d emEinfluB Rudolf Agricolas (1443-1485) mit Hilfe von loci communes eine dialektischeSuchmethode zum Sammeln von exempla empfiehlt und anschlief iend die Parabel ,Allegorie und imitat io antiker Sti lmuster ausfi ihr i ich erorter t , geht i iber den engenelocut io-Rahmen mit te la l ter i icher Lehrbucher h inaus.

2 'Pp. 122-2 3: W ie we nig es Erasm us um Reformen auf dem Gebiet rhetori-scher Theor ienbi ldung im Sinne der romischen Redekunst g ing, wie s ie Crassusund Antonius in Ciceros Dialog 'De oratore' votioigen, zeigt seine Bereitschaft,Geoffroi de Vinsauf neben Horaz und Quinti l ian in die Reihe der Rhetorik-Autor i t a t en aufzunehmen .



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126 R H E T O R I C Ashe claims, all ina dv erte ntly p re p ar ed th e wa y for th e att ic clar ity ofthe humanis t idea l l a rge ly through extending h i s copiousness toinc lude not s imply e lements of s ty le but a rgumenta t ive commonplaces as wel l and through giving prominence to ancient models ofdiscourse. On the other hand, a rhetor ical reading of Erasmus 'sbook might prese rve the i rony be tw een i ts os tens ib le in tent ion andthe uses to which i t was put , but the i rony would be relocated.Such a reading would t ake cognizance of the book ' s audience ,schoolmas ter s who themselves were s teeped in medieval rhe tor icand dialect ic and were perhaps more famihar wi th Geoff rey thanwi th Quint i l i an . Erasmus ' s t ask becomes one of moving tha t audi ence from familiar ground to less familiar, as part of his intention ofshowing them tha t rhe tor ic encompasses not mere ly s ty le but invent ion as wel l . Such a reading would also take cognizanceas Ihav e t r ied to do from the outse t of this essay of the co un term ov esErasmus has bui l t into his work, the ini t ia l move to warn of thedangers of copia, the lesson that co pio usn ess i s a lso the w ay tobrevi ty , the s t ruc ture tha t demons t ra tes two-s ided argument . Theirony would therefore l ie in the his tor ical undoing of his intent ion:whereas the Engl ish seemed to have read mainly the f i rs t par t ofthe book, the Jesuit s t r ans forme d an idea l of e loquen ce de pe nd en tm ore on the seco nd pa r t than on the f irs t bu t ancil lary to E rasm us 'sactual intent ion.

By my view, both Vickers and Bauer, l ike other his torians Ihave c it ed , thro ug h c onc ent ra t ing on the use s to wh ich the Decopiawas put , t rack the work's rhetorical fai lure: i t becomes a bookwhich fai led to succeed in fulf i l l ing i ts intentions though i t captured favorable at tent ion largely through the vocabulary-bui ldingor incidental uses to which i t could be put . Perhaps i t was doomedto failure. For the De copia,like m uc h hu m an ism , u l t ima te ly coll ided wi th a new movement away f rom the l inguis t i c and phi losophica l presuppos i t ions on which i t was bui l t . Humanis t nominal ism and skept icism were not viable ei ther in the Glaubenskdmpfe,the Reformat ion and Counter -Reformat ion which ended the per iodof Erasmus, or in the new scient ism which in the eyes of manyclosed the Renaissance. But the explanat ion does not foreclose theposs ibi li ty of yet read ing th e book alon g the l ines I ha ve sug ge s ted .Two f inal ques t ions remain: I f my reading of Erasmus is accurate ,w ha t use s can it serve , an d w ha t doe s i t te ll u s ab ou t w ha t Era sm uswas up to?

F i r s t , my argument might he lp us in terpre t o ther documents ofthe per iod . The k ind of invent iveness the Decopia teaches l inks i t



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Erasmus'sCopia 127with such Erasmian masterpieces as the Praise of Folly,w ith thecontroversial izing in Tudor drama,^^ with such curious documentsa s A n t h o n y M u n d a y ' s DefenseofContraries and the pervasive Elizabethan absorpt ion wi th paradox,^^ and wi th such communicat iveindirectness , or cleverness, as revealed in recent re-readings ofPut tenham. '^ Too, my argument might serve pedagogical purposes. I t may be s ignif icant that no recent book on rhetoric andcomposit ion, not within the last f i f ty years , has urged a restorat ionof deb ate, of p ro a n d co n argum entat ion.^5 At least Am erican rh etoric is ge ne rally sile nt on th e m atte r. B ut this is the very m atte rwhich begs for reconsiderat ion, part icularly in the composit ionclassroom, not simply because it is an essential feature of the classical t radi t ion but more importantly because i t is a possible way, asErasmus claimed, of enr iching s tudents ' invent ion. But could oneactual ly bring debatingabove al l , oral debatingback as a classroom exercise? Th e qu est io n l ies be yo nd the scop e of the task 1have assumed in this essay. But there is a related classroom exercise whose purpose has bear ing on my second ques t ion above,concerning Era sm us ' s in tent ion .

In his textbook on let ter-wri t ing, Erasmus is far more assert iveabout his rhetor ical pedag ogy , an d th e assert ions can be m ore th ana l it tle su rpris ing , if no t sho ckin g, to the mo de rn ear: N oth ing isso inheren t ly go od , he s tates , that it cann ot be m ad e to seem bad

^Fo r the controve rsial izing in Tudor d ram a see Joel B. Altm an, TheTudor Play ofMind (Berkeley, 1979).^ A n t h o n y M u n d a y ' s The Defense of Contraries (1593) w as a tra ns latio n ofOr tensio Landi 's Paradossi (1541), in which twelve of Landi's original thirty essaysare presen ted, defen ding pover ty , ugl iness , ignorance, b l indness , e tc. On the pervasiveness of paradox, the standard work remains Rosalie L. Colie 's Paradoxia Epi-demica (Princeton, 1966).^*See Daniel Javitch, Poetry and Courtliness in Renaissance England (Princeton,1978). See, too , Jav itch's Po etry and P referm ent at Elizab eth's Co urt: Som e Preliminary Ob serva t ions in Europdische Hofkultur im 16. und 17. jahrhunderf (Hamburg,1981), 163-69, an d, in the sam e volum e, Heinrich E Plett , Elisabethanische

Hofpoetik Gesellschaft licher C od e und asth etisch e Norm in Pu tten ham s 'Arte ofEnglish Poe sie, ' 41 -50 .^James J. Murphy offers a comprehensive survey of recent books and journalsdevoted wholly or in part to the restoration of rhetoric in the field of composition inhis Implicat ions of the 'Renais sanc e of Rhe toric ' in English Dep artm en ts, QJS75

(1989): 335-43. An interesting review of the place of a related matter, stasis, inmo dern com posit ion al theory is offered by Kath ryn Rosser Raign, Stasis TheoryRevisi ted: An Inventional Techne for Emp ow erin g S tud en ts, focuses 2 (Spring,1989): 19-26. See also n. 17 above.



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128 R H E T O R I C Aby a gif ted sp eak er . Th e advice ap pe ars in his ins t ruct ion to theteacher to hav e boy s wr i t e r ecan ta t ions of a rg um en ts w hich theyhad jus t h an d ed in a form of de ba te . Th e po int is tha t , By suchpract ice both f luency and readiness in speaking on any topic wil l beacquired. ^* T he asse rt ion s clarify th e function of tw o-sid ed arg umenta t ion in the De copia including the bald advice in me th o deleven tha t m ater ial can actual ly be tw is te d [torqueri possunt] toserve oppos i t e purposes . Such i s Erasmus ' s unders tanding of athoroughly t radi t ional heur is t ic . Perhaps the extent to which thatheur is t ic invi tes the charge that one would thereby teach merelygl ibness or ins incer i ty measures not s imply the extent to which wehave neglec ted invent ion and what our ances tor s meant bycopiabut , more impor tant ly perhaps , the extent to which we have neglected rhetor ical pae dae ia itself.

But le t me face that poss ible charge and conclude wi th aprolept ic example, one that wi l l a lso more di rect ly address mysecond q ue s t ion, b y ret ur nin g to an ear ly pa ssag e in the f irst pa r t ofth e Decopia,on ob scene l ang uag e . E rasm us begins wi th a genera ls tatement, quite appropriately, one might imagine, for a cler ic wri ting for schoolmasters who would ins t ruct l i t t le boys in a cathedralschool: Ind ece nt w or ds sho uld be ut ter ly ur ik no w n to Ch r is tianspeech. 27Th ere fol low, h ow ev er, c op iou s ex am ple s of obscenity,sure to provoke the at tent ion of any schoolmaster , wi th somechoice Lat in ph rase s tha t he m ight not ha ve he ard himself. Readingthe passag e today, on e m ight w on de r abo ut Era sm us ' s ow n p erver si ty: i f the book is meant to be Chris t ian speech, what is al l thisobsceni ty doing in i t? But on ref lect ion, Erasmus 's purpose becom es clear: it i s to m ak e his rea de r eng ag e in, an d th en teach, thekin d of crit ical thirikin g th at is at th e he ar t of thi s clev er bo ok .Erasmus here makes two poin t s : somet imes obscene words can beused , somet imes they cannotit a l l depends , as does everyth ingin rhetor ic , on aud ien ce an d occas ion. The sec ond p oin t is that onem ust a lwa ys be w are of fla tly dog m at ic s tatem en ts , like the on e tha t

^ O n the W riting of Lette rs (Deconscribendisepistolis), t rans . Char les Fa ntazzi ,CWE, vol . 25, 145-46.^TTie assertion is more forceful in the Latin {Obscoenas voces oportet ab omniChristianorum sermone proculabesse,11[D]), pa rt ly bec aus e voces is mo re com prehen sive than w or ds , par t ly becau se abesse aims more a t avoidance than ignorance,and par t ly because the asser t ion compr ises an ent i re thought , i.e., i t ends wi th aperiod and does not , as in the Toronto translat ion, comprise the f irst part of ac o m p o u n d se n t e n c e .



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Erasmus'sCopia 129ins is ts that indecency should always be ut ter ly avoided by Chr is t ians. Th e on e po int lea ds to the oth er: becau se context is all , thinking rhetorically deflates the categorical assertion.

The rein on e beg ins to m ov e towa rd th e very hear t of E rasm us 'srhetorical education, the true aim of which, in Erasmus 's lexicon,was alway s the d ev elo pm en t of character . Erasmian cop iousness isthe s ign of a versat i le and complex mind whose r ich resources oflanguage and skill in such arg um en tat ive p roced ures as in utramquepartem were the sures t safeguards agains t the educated man's gravest pi tfal l , that narrowness of mind which, in Erasmus 's lexicon aswell as in ou rs , is cal led do gm atism .'Tis no t for eve ry m an to go to C orin th the a da ge is offeredin the opening sentences of the Decopia to illustrate risk; it appearslater (part 1, ch ap . 50) as an il lustra tion of precision, a nd ye t a thirdt ime (chap. 154) as a means of expressing someone's luck. Dredging up antiquity is or i ly part of i ts function. For the modem readerschooled in the ways of non-Erasmian prudery, the adage mayrecal l the lesson on obscenity: a proverb from Horace's Epistles,itl i terally refers to the high fees charged by the famous Corinthian

who re Lais , w h o de m an de d m one y on the bar re lhead regardless ofhow dis t inguished the prospect ive cl ient . With or wi thout thatknowledge, f lexibi l i ty is the obvious lesson in Erasmus 's repeateduse of the adage,^ a f lexibi l i ty to be condit ionedthat is , determined as well as del imitedby the intel lectual means of rhetoric.That means above al l others is at work in the Decopia, howevermuch the book fai led to achieve Erasmus 's a im and however muchit was put to other uses. I f there is i rony in my own argument, i tlies he re: the aim of E ras m us 's book is only real ized w he n i t is readby that means which so marked his own intel lectual approach, a tleast in this most important schoolbook, by thirJsing about i t rhetorically. For he sought in this book cleverly, perhaps too cleverly,to teach the very means by which the book i tself is meant to beread.

2In an oth er tran sfo rm atio n, it can simp ly refer to the dan ge rou s na vigation alapproach to Corinth; seeAdagia1.4.1 (CWE , vol. 31 , 317-1 9).



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