Alex MuellerUniversity of Massachusetts Boston

alex.mueller@umb.edu

Rhetorical Intimacy:Geoffrey Chaucer, Poetry, and the Ars

Dictaminis

“Dictamen’s tyranny of stylistic prescriptions . . . discouraged the spontaneity and direct expression of thought and feeling that, at other times in history, have given the personal letter its distinctive character. With the diffusion of the prescription of ars dictaminis the personal letter as such disappeared.”

Ars Dictaminis:Death of the Personal Letter?

Ronald G. Witt, The Two Latin Cultures and the Foundation of Renaissance Humanism in Medieval Italy,

264.

Erasmus on Ovid’s Heroides

“. . . the common good must take precedence over private grief . . .”

Opus de conscribendis epistolis (1522)

The “Poet-Like” Manner of the Ovidian Women

I had gret wondir of thair layis sereQuhilkis in that arte mycht have na way compereOf castis quent, rethorik colouris fyneSo poete-lyk in subtyle fair manereAnd elaquent fyrme cadens regulere.(817-21)

Gavin Douglas, The Palis of Honoure(1501)

Chaucer:A Woman’s Friend

“ . . . he was evir . . . all womanis frend”

Gavin Douglas, Eneados(1513)

Cicero’s Letters to his

Friends

Epistolae ad familiaresMarcus Tullius Cicero

(Venice: Johannes da Spira, 1469)

The Deceptive Rhetoric of “Frendshippe”

Therefore be no wyght so nyce,To take a love oonly for chere,Or speche, or for frendly manere,For this shal every woman fynde,That som man, of his pure kynde,Wol shewen outward the fayreste,Tyl he have caught that what him leste. (1.276-82)

Geoffrey Chaucer, The House of Fame

Dido’s Friendly Rhetoric

She seyde, certes, that she sory wasThat he hath had swych peryl and swich cas;And, in hire frendly speche, in this manereShe to hym spak, and seyde as ye may here. (1082-5)

Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women

Giovanni di Bonandrea

Brevis introductio ad dictamen

View from my apartment.

Bibilioteca di Bologna MS 313, f.

2r

Early 14th century

A New Rhetorical Category:Habitus

De adiectione personarum habitu precellentium

[On the salutation of persons distinguished by habitus]

. . . Et item corporis aliquam commoditatem non natura datam sed studio et industria comparatam . . . [And again [we name that habitus], some proportion of the body not given by nature but collected by study and industry.]

Giovanni di Bonandrea, Brevis introductio ad dictamenBiblioteca di Bologna, MS 2461, 77r

Dido’s Dead Letter

Upon the fir of sacryfice she sterte,And with his swerd she rof hyre to the herte.

But as myn auctour seith, yit thus she seyde;Or she was hurt, byforen or she deyde,She wrot a lettre anon that thus began:. . . But who wol al this letter have in mynde,Rede Ovyde, and in hym he shal it fynde.(1350-67)

Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women

Ecquid, ut adspecta est studiosae littera dextrae,Protinus est oculis congnita nostra tuis–an, nisi legisses auctoris nomina Sapphus,hoc breve nescires unde movetur opus? (15.1-4)

Ovid, Heroides 15“Sappho to Phaon”

Tell me, when you looked upon the characters from my eager right hand, did your eye know immediately whose name they were – or, unless you had read their author’s name, Sappho, would you fail to know whence these brief words come?