A History of Renaissance Rhetoric 1380-1620

• First comprehensive history of renaissance rhetoric
• Combines detailed analysis of the works of the most important thinkers with information on contributions of hundreds of more minor figures
• First history to use Green and Murphy's Renaissance Rhetoric Short-Title Catalogue

Readership: Scholars and students of the history of rhetoric, Renaissance Italian, French, and English literature; Renaissance historians, especially historians of ideas

Peter Mack, Director of the Warburg Institute, University of London; Professor of English, University of Warwick

Peter Mack studied at Oxford, the Warburg Institute, University of London, and Rome. He has been editor of the leading international journal Rhetorica and Chair of the English Department and the Arts Faculty at the University of Warwick. From October 2010 he will become Director of the Warburg Institute and Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition. His books include, Renaissance Argument (1993), Elizabethan Rhetoric (2002) and Reading and Rhetoric in Montaigne and Shakespeare (2010).

"In A History of Renaissance Rhetoric 13801620 Mack makes those important Latin Renaissance rhetoric manuals visible, in the process bringing to our attention some important works in the history of rhetoric ... Peter Mack has done more than anyone to make this important literature available and accessible for our age." - Arthur E. Walzer, Rhetoric Society Quarterly

"an ambitious compendium of rhetorical history that brings a broad corpus together ... Mack's book encapsulates many of the essential rhetorical works of the Renaissance, providing insightful and articulate overviews of its primary sources along with convienient groupings to help the novice scholar make sense of these immense and diverse sources." - Amanda J. Gerber, Comitatus

1: Introduction and Origins
2: Diffusion and Reception of Classical Rhetoric
3: Italy 1390-1480
4: Agricola
5: Erasmus
6: Northern Europe 1519-1545: The Age of Melanchthon
7: Northern Europe 1545-1580: Ramus and company
8: Southern Europe in the Sixteenth Century
9: New Syntheses 1600-1620: Keckermann, Vossius and Caussin
10: Manuals of Tropes and Figures
11: Letter-writing manuals
12: Preaching manuals and Legal dialectics
13: Vernacular Rhetorics
14: . Conclusion: Renaissance Rhetoric
Bibliography of Secondary Works
Glossary of Rhetorical and Dialectical Terms