C630-1220	Studies in Literary History
Topic: Language and Truth in the Renaissance
Above section meets with FRIT F620
Prof. MacPhail        3:30-5:35   M    BH 011
The Renaissance was fascinated by the power and duplicity of language
and especially of the rhetorical tradition inherited from classical
antiquity, which identified humanity with the faculty of speech. Our
course will examine the contested veracity of speech both in humanist
writings and vernacular prose of the 15th and 16th centuries. To
situate the problem in relation to its historical antecedents, we
will begin with one of the earliest extent works of the western
rhetorical tradition, the Praise of Helen by the ancient Greek
sophist, Gorgias of Leontini, whose concept of chairos or the
opportunism of speech we will juxtapose with the indictment of
rhetoric in Plato's Phaedrus. From the Latin tradition we will
retrieve Seneca's definition of the style best suited to
philosophical discourse or "quae veritati dat operam oratio." From
the early Renaissance we will study some brief texts in praise and
dispraise of rhetoric including a letter by Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola and a lecture or prolusio by Angelo Poliziano. Next we will
appraise the esthetic of brevity as an alternative to Ciceronian
artifice in Erasmus' collections of adages and apothegms. Erasmus'
Praise of Folly will exemplify the characteristic Renaissance genre
of the declamation while revealing the religious dimension of the
problem of truth and language. To assess the autonomy of fiction from
the traditional truth claims of narrative, we will read Pantagruel
and Gargantua by François Rabelais, two works which also explore the
contexts of evangelism, occultism, and other approaches to the
ineffable. To understand the political dimension of our topic, we
will read Etienne de La Boétie's Discourse on Voluntary Servitude and
excertps from Francesco Patrizi's 10 Dialogues on Rhetoric after
taking a glance back at Tacitus' Dialogue of the Orators. Finally, we
will turn to the Essays of Michel de Montaigne, where we will be
concerned primarily with skepticism, or the proposition that no
proposition is true. We will conclude with Montaigne's foray into the
New World in search of a true witness to the utopian project of
unmediated experience. From this survey of Renaissance paradoxes and
polemics, we can gain new insight into the contemporary inquiry into
the limits of rhetoric and the proximity of truth and language.
The course will be conducted in English and all of the texts are
available in English translation. French majors are required to read
the French texts in the original language. Students will do an in-
class presentation and a term paper.