Handbook of Literary Rhetoric. A Foundation for Literary Study by H. Lausberg; D. F. Orton; R. D.

Anderson Review by: Andrew Laird The Classical Review, New Series, Vol. 50, No. 1 (2000), pp. 313-314 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3065464 . Accessed: 17/02/2014 12:59
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THE CLASSICAL

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adjectives are 'weak'.) The concluding chapter secondly considers the degree to which descriptions of a locus amoenus are woven into their respective literary contexts. H. concludes that in all literary periods some are closely embedded in the work, while others are not. This general observation counters Curtius's view of a rhetoricized topos whose instances became virtually detachable from their contexts starting, with the virtuoso descriptive performances of Ovid. Universityof Virginia JOHN F. MILLER

H. LAUSBERG:Handbook of Literary Rhetoric. A Foundationfor LiteraryStudy (trans. D. F Orton and R. D. Anderson). Pp. xxxi + 921. Leiden, Boston, and Cologne: Brill, 1998 (first published in German 1960, 2nd edn 1973). Cased, $240.50. ISBN: 90-04-10705-3.
To speak of selection is perhaps to misuse the word. Lausberg leaves nothing out. The excess of detail is intolerable and self-defeating ... In handling the material, Lausberg owes most to Quintilian, the fidlest of the ancient sources. But the fact of which the reader is inadequately warned is that this is Lausberg's'Artof Rhetoric', and very odd to the classical reader,much of it appears. Those rather caustic remarks about the first edition of L.'s Handbuchder LiterarischenRhetorik come from a review by N. E. Douglas, published in the 1962 CR (pp. 246-7). A great deal of thought and scholarship has been contributed to the study of rhetoric in the forty years since that early review was written. Ancient rhetoric has enjoyed a renaissance in contemporary poetics, theory of literature, and cultural studies, among writers as diverse as Wayne Booth and Michel Foucault. Roland Barthes published an aide-memoire to ancient rhetoric in the 1960s and Nietzsche's lectures on the subject have recently been translated. More strictly within the realm of classical studies, many leading scholars including George Kennedy and Donald Russell have done much to put the history of rhetoric and the study of individual rhetorical texts on a more secure footing. It is telling that this revival of interest has been favourableto L.'s handbook, which has become a standard reference tool: de fbcto, its utility hardly needs to be defended. A contemporary perspective provides some answers to Douglas's criticisms quoted above-criticisms which this review will attempt to meet because they could still resurfacefrom some quarters.First, there now seems to be little basis for objecting to the great number and detail of sources in the work. Researchers in Latin and Greek literature who are working properly should always use compendious works of reference. Indeed, for a number of recent studies of the rhetorization of ancient literature to have come about, the kind of comprehensiveness and breadth offered by L. is clearly indispensable. For example, G. B. Conte's The Rhetoric of Imhitation (Ithaca, 1986) and A. J. Woodman's Rhetoric in Classical HistoriographY (London, 1988)-studies as important and influential as they are divergent-rely on detailed knowledge of tropes and figures (and competing testimonies about them), and not merely on some general ideas of what rhetoric was like. A claim that L.'s collection is too individualistic in conception would only hold if one could find an ars rhetorica which was not somehow idiosyncratic. The response to that claim does not only have to rest on principles of anti-foundationalism which are currently in favour. One could also appeal to historicist common sense: everyone who has ever written a rhetorical manual, from Quintilian to Puttenham, will be aware of how rhetoric works, and will be, to a greater or lesser extent, a rhetorician himself. It is a characteristic of rhetoricians (as it is of all kinds of teachers) to present personal perspectives as the perspectives, to present independent opinions as official L. shows all the hidden demonstrations. At least, with the encyclopedic scope of this IHandbook, plumbing-and it would be hard to see what L. would have had to gain by deliberately seeking to appropriate and personally customize the art/science of rhetoric. Finally, Douglas's impression that L.'s collection appears 'very odd to the classical reader' is grounded on the depressing assumption that a classical reader should be confined not only to classical texts, but to ancient classical texts. L.'s study includes coverage of rhetoric in the medieval and modern periods, with a 300 page of index of rhetorical terms in French, as well as of those in Latin and Greek. Surely part of the point of reading ancient literatureis to acquire a c Oxford UniversityPress, 2000

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better understanding of later literatures:the range of testimonia collected by L. (who was a pupil of E. R. Curtius) provides abundant proof of the vital and central role of classical rhetoric for the Western literary tradition as a whole. And this Handbookis more than a glossary of technical terms purely within rhetoric: the last sections of the study (pp. 504-94) are devoted to poetics, whilst the earliest parts examine definitions and conceptions of rhetoric, placing it in relation to grammar,philosophy, and the artes liberales as a whole. L. did not by any means intend to offer a historical study, but scrutiny of the various entries contained in this book will provide considerable insight into the evolution of humanistic education. Universityof Wanvick ANDREW LAIRD

P. ROLLINSON,

R. GECKLE: A Guide to Classical Rhetoric. Pp. xxx

+ 179. Signal Mountain, TN: Summertown, 1998. Cased, $29.95. ISBN: 1-893009-01-7.
A handbook concisely introducing the classical rhetoricians seems a good idea; unfortunately, this book does not do the job well. An introduction provides a brief but unreliable historical overview. The development of 'the acute need for oratorical powers' (p. xiii) is explained by contrasting Homeric society and the classical polis; the account of the latter gives the mistaken impression that democracy was normal in the polis, and concludes with the remarkable assertion that 'over much of the Greek world ... came the demand for education for all [sic!] free men in gaining and perfecting argumentative and persuasive skills with words' (p. xiv). No hint is given that skill with words was already a key element of a young man's training in Homer (Iliad 9.442f.). The history of rhetorical theory that follows is also misleading in detail. Consider p. xxi, where the statements that Hermagoras' staseis 'were universally adopted' and that 'there are four of them' sandwich a list of treatments of stasis that includes the Rhetorica ad Herennium(which only recognizes three staseis), Quintilian (who surveys systems with up to eight), Hermogenes (with thirteen), and Menander Rhetor (the works on epideictic make no reference to stasis at all: the claim that Menander 'applies the issues to epideictic rhetoric' is simply and utterly wrong). The bulk of the book comprises thirty short chapters summarizing the works of major rhetoricians.The aim is 'to provide comprehensiveinformation about ancient rhetorical theory in the form of highly detailed descriptive summaries of all the important authorities and works from Greek and Latin antiquity' (p. vi). All' is a bit of a stretch: Hermagoras is omitted (the loss of his works is not a sufficient explanation: Corax and Tisias have a chapter), and so is Sopater. 'Highly detailed' is even more of a stretch: Quintilian is covered in fifteen pages. But the major flaw is that these epitomes are too detailed for the space available.At times the desire to stuff in detail means that the summaries are compressed to the point of unintelligibility: I defy anyone who is not already well acquainted with Hermogenes' On Issues to figure out the profoundly muddled paragraph at the bottom of p. 70. But even when this pitfall is avoided the summaries make no attempt to help the reader make sense of the material: bald lists of technical terms and precepts without context or rationale do nothing to advance understanding--which, surely, is what a 'guide' should do. The collection of Rhetores Graeci curiously attributed here to an editor named 'Leonardi Spengel' (passin) is occasionally cited where more recent editions have superseded it: Schmid's text of pseudo-Aristides and Felten's of Nicolaus should have been mentioned. But in general the bibliographical references are commendably up to date: Dilts and Kennedy are cited for the Anonymus Seguerianusand Apsines, and Patillon for Theon. It is a strong sign of the increasing vigour of this field that supplements are already needed: note, in particular, the translation of pseudo-Aristides in Rutherford'sCanonsof Style (Oxford, 1998). I have recentlyexpressed doubts about Apsines' authorship of the treatise traditionally ascribed to him (AJP 119 [1998], 89--111); pedantry compels me to point out that his ethnic is no guarantee that he was actually born in Gadara (p. 13). Universitvof Leeds , Oxford UniversityPress, 2000 MALCOLM H EATH

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