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