Rhetoric and Poetics in the Early Middle Ages
Paul E. Prill
eception and transformation, Curtius reminds us, characterize the life of antiquity in Middle Ages.' That this is so clearly demonstrated embryo pioneer essay Richard McKeon more fully James Murphy's Rhetoric Ages.^ Both Murphy trace metamorphosis classical precepts rhetoric into artes dictaminis, poetriae, praedicandi twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth centuries. What less well-known that earlier medieval period was also a time fertUe collection adaptation. The encylopedists Martianus Capella, Cassiodorus, Isidore SevUle, Rabanus Maurus, ensured elementary principles seven liberal arts would be preserved for later generations, albeit crippled form. Scribes diUgently copied manuscripts Cicero, VirgU, Ovid, Seneca, others. And church, eager to carry out Augustine's program despoil Egyptians, re-
Rhetorica