Abstract

It may well be asked: what sort of interest to the philosopher has a work on rhetoric such as this? Consider, however, an utterance such as the following: ‘In every discussion three things are the objects of enquiry: an sit, quid sit, and quale sit. For first there must be something about which the discussion has arisen. Until this is made clear no discussion as to what it is can arise; far less can we determine what its qualities are, until this second point is ascertained’. In spite of its prima facie Thomistic flavour, it antedates Aquinas by a good twelve centuries, and has a writer on rhetoric as its author. And at the opening of the Middle Ages Lafranc lectured on the Herennian Rhetoric, the influence of which is visible in the works of St Anselm, emerging as a rudimentary doctrine of analogy. The tenets of the ancient rhetorical writers also exert their influence on medieval literature, of course, and acquaintance with them is sometimes essential for the full understanding of the moral points which are being made by an author such as Chaucer, for example.