Rhetorical Arguments

The present volume is a tribute to Lucia Calboli Montefusco, Professor Emerita of the University of Bologna, internationally recognised specialist in the history of rhetoric and President of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric 2009-11.

After a discussion of her career and publications 27 essays follow linked in different ways to rhetorical argumentation, one of the central problems of Lucia Calboli Montefusco's research. Following a flexibly chronological plan, these studies discuss successively Greek theory and practice (Thucydides, Lysias, Isaeus, Isocrates, Aristotle, Chrysippus), and Greco-Roman rhetoric between the Republic and late antiquity (Cicero, Quintilian, Chariton of Aphrodisias, John Chrysostom, Choricius of Gaza, Cassiodorus, Martianus Capella). The volume ends with analyses on medieval Latin epistolography (Thirteenth century) and dialectic in the renaissance (Lorenzo Valla and Rudolph Agricola).

These studies devoted to the dialectical aspect of rhetoric are enhanced by studies of the link between rhetorical argumentation and historical circumstances, the parts of the oration, other forms of textual production (the novel, the letter), theatre, torture and the law. This broad view, faithful to the breadth of ' the Realm of Rhetoric ' (Chaim Perelman) is also a tribute to a tradition which Lucia Calboli Montefusco has herself illuminated to a very large extent in working as well on Aristotle and Consultus Fortunatianus as on George Trapezuntius of Crete.