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The virtues of rhetoric: Alcuin's Disputatio de rhetorica et de uirtutibus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2009

Matthew S. Kempshall
Affiliation:
University of Oxford

Abstract

Alcuin's Disputatio de rhetorica et de uirtutibus has traditionally posed problems of interpretation in terms of both form (its apparently bipartite structure) and content (as a digest of the rules of rhetoric combined with an exposition of the four cardinal virtues). However, a close reading of the sources from which Alcuin was drawing his argument (Cicero, Julius Victor, Fortunatianus, Marius Victorinus, Cassiodorus and, above all, Augustine and Quintilian) suggests why he should have chosen to emphasize the connection between rhetoric and the virtues in this particular way.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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