Rhetoric and Intertextuality

Author(s): Heinrich F. Plett

Source: Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Summer 1999), pp.
313-329
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the International Society for the History
of Rhetoric

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HEINRICH F. P L E T T

Rhetoric and IntertextuaUty

Abstract: IntertextuaUty is not only a literary but also a rhetorical
phenomenon. Though largely neglected by modem scholarship,
rhetorical intertextuality nevertheless looks back on a long tradition
in print and communicative practice. Its manifestations are above all
the commonplaces (koinoi topoi, loci communes) which represent not
only abstract sedes argumentorum but also concrete formulae taken
from pre-texts, literary and non-literary ones, that offer themselves
for reemployment in texts of a derivative kind, in "litterature au
second degre" (Genette) or, metaphorically speaking, in secondhand literature. The following aspects of the commonplaces deserve
closer attention: their place (of publication), their re-cognition, their
disposition, their genres, their multi- and intermediality, and their
normativity. These facets constitute a complex spectrum of an
intertextual rhetoric leading up to an "interrhetoric" which makes
possible the recognition and analysis of such rhetorical phenomena
as transcend the limits of a single text and of a single (e.g. verbal)
sign-system.
t first sight rhetoric has n o connection w i t h
intertextuality.' Rhetoric, as its fradition p r o p a g a t e s , is
b y definition "the art of speaking weU" {ars bene dicendi)
oi which the qualifying a d v e r b "weU" (bene) can be

' For a survey of the concepts of intertextuality, see H. F. Plett,

"IntertextuaUties", in H. F. Plett ed., Intertextuality (Berlin: W. de Gmyter, 1991) pp.
3-29. The following paper was presented at an international conference on
intertextuaUty organized by Professor Ziva Ben-Porat from the Porter Institute at Tel
Aviv University and supported by the Israel Foundation of Sciences.
The International Society for the History of Rhetoric, Rhetorica, Volume
XVIL Number 3 (Summer 1999)
313

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314

RHETORICA

hiterpreted by the synonyms "persuasively", "skUfuUy" or even

"beautifuUy". Accordmg to classical standards tiie aun of tiiis art
is always the same: the production of a text, viz. an oration, a
sermon, a letter, or a poem. The procedure to achieve this end
foUows tiie ti-aditional five-phase-sfructure of inventio, dispositio,
elocutio, memoria and pronuntiatio/adio. Each of these five phases is
characterized by a set of rules which is successively appUed,
either as a whole or m part, durmg the process of text generation.
Its result represents an artefact, i.e. an artificially produced
texture of meaning. This can assume an oral or a Uteral (written,
prUited) shape. Manuscript and print culture have not, however,
rendered memoria and pronuntiatio/adio altogether superfluous,
but have allocated to them a different medial significance. The
same may hold tme for the data banks and the intemet highways
of the Electronic Age.
An mtertextual rhetoric presupposes interrelations between
two or more texts of a rhetorical constitution. This cormection
basically consists of a repetition of a threefold kfrid: 1. structural,
2. material, 3. both structural and material. Stmctural
uitertextuality is based on a set of rules generating texts according
to the aforementioned phases or sections of the rhetorical process
(inventio, dispositio, etc.). Material intertextuaUty exists in one or
more signs or sign configurations shared by two or more texts.
The synthesis of these two IntertextuaUties can be regarded as the
most frequent type: certain sign configurations generated by
certain rules recurring ui a textual series of two or more
representatives. For signs without rules have no structure, rules
without signs remain abstract entities. Thus an intertext may be
defined as being constituted by text and texture. Such a statement
applies to any kind of intertext and hence to the rhetorical
intertext as well.
In rhetoric a rule-govemed UitertextuaUty refers to the more
or less developed systems which have emerged in the course of its
history. Thus inventio represents a system of discovery procedures
(topoi), elocutio one of figures and tropes, memoria one of
mnemonic places {loci) and unages {imagines), pronuntiatio/adio
one of communicative mediaeach of them divided into diverse
subsystems and their respective categories. If persistently put into
practice, these systems generate series of texts which are

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Rhetoric and Intertextuality

315

interlinked by a number of common structural features. This is the

origin of a rhetorical intertextuality whose methodological basis is
not one of shared signs, but rather one of shared structures.
Varieties of the latter extend from the one extreme, thefr total
reproduction, through various degrees of deviation unto the
opposite extreme, their total inversion. Hence the categories and
genres of rhetorical uitertextuality allow of a broad range of
possible reaUzations. An interesting case is the inversion of a
category like frony or of a genre like epideixis. Intertextual irony
results from the tropical inversion of a pre-text statement in a
post-text. And intertextual epideixis in its negative form is caused
by a generic inversion of praise and blame in parodies and
travesties. Common to aU the structural varieties of rhetorical
intertextuaUty is the fact that they refer to rules (praecepta), not to
examples (exempla).
It is these examples on which our principal interest is focused
in the foUowing outline. Its topic is the rhetorical topics {topoi), or,
to be more precise, the koinoi topoi, loci communes, lieux communs,
or Gemeinpldtze, as they are weU known in various languages.
They were rediscovered by Emst Robert Curtius in his epochmaking study European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages which
was first published in German in 1948,^ and made available in an
EngUsh translation by WiUard Trask in 1953. Its central
hypothesisthe postulate of historical "Toposforschung"often
met with disapproval and even hostUity; for under this concept
Curtius subsumed such formulae as "puer senex" or "arma et
Utterae" and such metaphors as "totus mundus agit histrionem"
or "aU the world is a stage". Classical scholars blamed him for his
historical "incorrectness", the leftist fritelUgentsia despised him for
his aUeged conservatism. The reproach of historical error was
mairUy dfrected against his abandonment of the theoretical and
argumentative approach in favour of a material and pragmatic
reinterpretation of the topoi. In contrast to this phUosophicaUy
inspired criticism in the wake of German "Geistesgeschichte"
which continues up to the present, Roland Barthes in his article
^ Europdische Literatur und lateinisdies Mittelalter (Bem: Francke, 1948) 10th edn,
1984. For a more recent discussion of the topos concept, see the anthology of essays
edited by Lynette Hunter, Toward a Definition of Topos: Approaches to Analogical
Reasoning (Basingstoke: MacmUlan, 1991).

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316

RHETORICA

"L'ancierme rhetorique" (1970) maintafris a twofold defmition of

the term: "1) ce sont des formes vides, communes a tous les
arguments (plus eUes sont vides, plus eUes sont communes...2) ce
sont des stereotypes, des propositions rebaches".' It is tiie same
"reification de la Topique" which also Curtius had in mfrid, and it
is this materialisation of the commonplaces which represents the
centre of our concept of an intertextual rhetoric. This concept is
not based on an Uiterpretation of classical authorities such as
Aristotle but is extracted from the commonplaces themselves. As
a textual basis for this enterprise wiU serve the commonplacebook of the Renaissance which was the heyday of this intertextual
phenomenon. The research performed by W. G. Crane (1937),
Sister Joan Mary Lechner (1962) and, recently, Francis Goyet and
Anne Moss supplies empirical evidence to the formation of such a
concept which reaches as far as the age of Postmodernism.
Collections of commonplaces do not consist of abstract rules
but of concrete examples, liiis does not mean, however, that such
examples lack a theoretical foundation. Such a foundation
undoubtedly exists but not in an explicit manner. The axiomatic
basis is the imitatio audorum oi classical rhetoric. Its
presupposition is the idea that some authors, works or parts of
works are more prestigious than others and hence can be
regarded as models for future texts. In their entirety these
represent a body of Uterature which constitutes a "Weltliteratur"
(Goethe), a "musee imaginaire" (Malraux) or, in sfraightforward
terms, "the westem canon" (Bloom). Such a canon was upheld by
the antiqui, the classicists, and contested by the modemi, thefr
progressive opponents. It not only marks a superiority of value
but also one of famiUarity. For such works as form part of the
canon are as a rule much better known than the rest. Once they
have achieved this status, they offer themselves readUy for the reuse or, more technically speaking, the recycling of thefr material.
^ R. Barthes, "L'ancierme rhetorique: Aide-memoire", Communications 16 (1970)
pp. 207-08.
' W. G. Crane, Wit and Rhetoric in tlie Renaissance (repr. Gloucester, MA: P.
Smith, 1964) ch. 3, "The English Commonplace Books"; Sr J. M. Lechner, Renaissance
Concepts of the Commonplaces (repr. Westport, CN: Greenwood, 1974); F. Goyet, Le
sublime du "lieu commun": I'invention rfidorique dans I'antiquite d d la renaissance (Paris:
Champion, 1996); A. Moss, Printed Commonplace Books and the Structuring of
Rermissance Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).

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Rhetoric and Intertextuality

317

This means an mtertextual career, first on a national and then

possibly on an international basis. It proceeds from popular
collections variously referred to as anthologies, dictionaries,
scrapbooks or, as a generic term, commonplace-books. In these
the works of the canon contUiue to exist, not in thefr entirety but
usuaUy as fragments cuUed from thefr original contexts. Having
become independent entities by now, they find themselves
dependent again, this time in a new commvmity of texts of maybe
quite a heterogeneous nature. In this new context they exist as
virtual fritertexts (or an fritertextual competence) which offer
themselves for a reactivation (or an intertextual performance) in
further texts. These texts are not original creations butin one
way or otherrepetitions of older texts. Such commonplace
intertextualities can be described by a number of features.

1. THE PLACE OF COMMONPLACES

Commonplaces are not hapax legomerm or singular occurrences but

widely circulated meaningful phenomena. Thefr invention is
closely cormected with memory. For invention provides the
materials for memory and retrieves them from there, once they
are needed. How often a dictum has to be repeated in order to
become a commonplace cannot be measured by statistics alone.
The commonplace-book came into being with the Gutenberg era
and quickly gained currency in Westem Europe. Erasmus's
Adagia, first printed in 1500, was one of the most successful
commonplace-books in the Renaissance. Though it displays an
almost infinite variety of additions, abbreviations, commentaries,
adaptations, franslations, and formats in its publishing history, a
complete bibliography of this work can only give a faint idea of its
popularity with the readmg public. Before the invention of the
printing press the mnemonic receptacle of the commonplace was
either the individual memory or the manuscript. Classical rhetoric
is centred on the individual memory by postulatmg a memoria
artificialis composed of places and images. In the Renaissance this
now obsolete technique of an oral culture survived m the visual

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RHETORICA

and verbal images of reUgious Uterature (emblem, meditation)

where it franscended tiie mental subjectivity of its origin. The
manuscript culture prepared the ground for a greater objectivity
of storing commonplaces by pen and frik on sheets of paper often
called "tables" or "table books", "notebooks", or even
"misceUanies".' What they shared was thefr usefulness as aidememoires for thefr respective compilers who evidently adhered to
the beUef that human knowledge could be epitomised in brief
entries. Thus some of the distinguished Cambridge poets of the
seventeenth centuryMUton, Herbert, Cowley, Herrick and
otherskept such private notebooks, most of which were
pubUshed only in this century. Ben Jonson's famous notebook
with its franscriptions and branslations from his readmg (e.g.
Daniel Heinsius's treatise De tragoedia) was printed posthumously
in 1641 under the title Timber, or Discoveries (with the further
specification Explorata) mdicating thereby that it represents an
Uiventory of prefabricated matter (timber) waiting for its possible
reemployment in further texts. Once made public, it started a
commonplace-book career of its own. The process of transition
from the manuscript to the printed book marked a progress from
private to common mtellectual property. Whereas in the
Gutenberg Galaxy the commonness of commonplaces was
restricted by the spatial and temporal limits of postal service and
book trade, the Electronic Age effects it within an instant of time.
Intertextual rhetoric becomes an omnipresent virtuality in
Marshall McLuhan's global vUlage (a commonplace in itself). Thus
the shift of place from individual memory to the written
notebook, from there to the printed commonplace-book and agam
from there to the electronic data-bank safeguards the
commonplace an ever widening circle of distribution. This does
not mean that each older mnemonic "store-house" is entfrely
superseded by a newer one; aU types rather coexist together.

' See P. Beal, "The Seventeenth-Century Commonplace Book", in W. Speed Hill

ed.. New Ways of Looking at Old Texts: Papers of the Rermissance English Text Society,
1985-1991 (Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1993) pp.
131-47.

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319

2. T H E DISPOSITION OF COMMONPLACES

Commonplace-books may consist of entries put together in a

random manner. Such are to be found in private manuscript
notebooks which often foUow the chronology of the writer's
reading experience. But it is already the Spanish humanist Juan
Luis Vives who advises his students to unpose a certain structure
on thefr collections:
Make a book of blank leaves of a proper size. Divide it into certain
topics. In one, jot down names of subjects of daily converse: the
mind, body, our occupations, games, clothes, divisions of time,
dwellings, foods; in another, idioms or formulae docendi; in another,
sententiae; in another, proverbs; in another, difficult passages from
authors; in another, matters which seem worthy of note to thy
teacher or thyself.'
An Ulustration of this procedure is made available by the recent
pubUcation of the early seventeenth-century Southwell-Sibthorpe
manuscript commonplace-book (Folger MS. V.b.l98) which
contains poems (sonnets, epitaphs), letters, apophthegms,
abstracts (Plinius, Plutarch, Suetonius), paraphrases (Seneca),
scriptural commentaries (on the Decalogue), and a mini-bestiary.'
Greater emphasis than in this manuscript collection was, of
course, placed on the structure or, in rhetorical terms, the
dispositio oi the pruited commonplace-book. Two principles of
ordering are particularly noteworthy: 1. the alphabetical sequence
of topics and 2. thefr division according to hierarchical or general
semantic criteria {Arbor Porphyrearm, similarities and contrasts,
binary classifications). The former is the simpler one and can be
found m such book subtitles as "set forth fri commonplaces by
order of the alphabet" (B.106)'' or "ranked in alphabetical order"

' Quoted in R. R. Bolgar, The Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries (New York:
Harper & Row, 1964) p. 273.
' J. Klene, C.S.C. ed.. The Southwell-Sibthorpe Commonplace Book (Folger MS.
V.b.l98) (Tempe: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1997).
' The registration numbers in brackets are those of H. F. Plett, English
Renaissance Rhetoric and Poetics: A Systematic Bibliography of Pritrmry and Secondary
Sources (Leiden: Brill, 1996), where full bibliograpical details are available.

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RHETORICA

(B.120) but also, as a matter-of-fact, in tiie indices affixed to many

commonplace-books (B.122.B). The latter, more complex one,
presupposes a phUosophical concept, a theological doctrfrie, or an
educational curriculum. Many encyclopaedic works of the
seventeentii century (Alsted, Comenius, Fludd, Keckermaim,
Kfrcher) foUow such a guidelme, which ultfrnately goes back to
Aristotle's Topica (I.xiv. 105b). On tiie otiier hand tiie more
popular commonplace-books try to avoid the unpression of being
sfrictly "methodical" because this may be the source of boredom
and hence defrimental to a commercial success. Thus
metaphorical titles like Bel-vedere, or The Garden of the Muses
(B.108), The Forest of Fancy (B.113), The English Treasury of Wit and
Language (B.119), The Banquet of Sapience (B.121), The Golden Chain
of Divine Aphorisms (B.131), The Jewel House of Art and Nature
(B.159.B), Mel Heliconium, or Poetical Honey (B.162.A) and The
Golden Grove (B.170) promise delight, wealth, variety, and
copiousnessfeatures that seem to stand m direct opposition to
the commonness of commonplaces. A compilation by Thomas
Gainsford makes this all the more evident; it armounces "The rich
cabinet furnished with variety oi excellent descriptions, exquisite
characters, witty discourses, and delightful histories divine and
moral". Here aU the quaUties are assembled that are requfred by
the rhetorical fradition: copia (rich), varietas (variety), ortmtus
(exquisite), ingenium (witty), deledatio (delightful). This
commonplace-book addresses itself to poets who do not look for
uispfration but for practical inventories of topical material. Thefr
(evidently courtly) ideal of poefry is the creation of aesthetic
delight by means of styUstic ornamentation.

3. THE GENRES OF COMMONPLACES

Commonplace-books are of two kinds. Some address the

specialist; others offer a mixed assortment of topics. In the chapter
of his encyclopaedia Polyhistor entitled "De locorum communium
scriptoribus" (I.xxi), Daniel Georg Morhof
enumerates

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Rhetoric and IntertextuaUty

321

commonplace-books on history,' medicine, the natural sciences,

and Uterature but also hybrids with a wide variety of topics.
BibUcal and Uterary collections are among the most popular ones,
because they propagate quotable maxims and purple patches for
everybody. One of the principal reasons for compiling
commonplaces is moral instruction. In his Foundacion of Rhetorike
(1563) Richard Ramolde makes this evident by the definition: "A
Common place is a Oracion, dUatyng and amplifiyng good or
euiU, whiche is incidente or lodged m any man",'" and iUusfrates it
by marginal glosses added to an oration such as: "Man borne by
nature to societee" or "Order conserueth common wealth" or
"Theiues not mete to be in any societie". The genres of
commonplaces are acadeiruc on the one hand and Uterary on the
other. The Uterary ones are often genera minora and encompass, for
instance, epigrams, songs, riddles, jests (facetiae), aphorisms,
apophthegms, proverbs, maxims, sentences,
diaracters,
descriptions, aUegories etc. A multitude of these is contained in
Edward PhiUips' Mysteries of Love and Eloquence (1658), a
handbook of poUte wooing and complimenting. As early as 1597
Francis Bacon had published a mixed commonplace-book under
the title Essays. Religious Meditations. Places of perswasion and
disswasion. Indeed, as research has shown long ago, the essay is
firmly installed in the commonplace tradition. This holds true not
only for Bacon's but also, though m a different way, for
Montaigne's essays. That the contact with the rhetorical tradition
was StiU extant, is demonsfrated by Bacon's addition of Places of
perswasion and disswasion to his anthology. Most of these
commonplace genres of Uterature continue to exist untU the
present day. They are not held in great esteem by literary
historians and often share the fate of rhetoric. Yet these genres of
rhetorical Uterature prove more durable than their adversaries
tend to beUeve. That thefr popularity has never ceased is
documented by numerous best-sellers of this kind. A modem
instance of interest m this context is John Robert Colombo,
Canada's best-known maker of "found poetry". The very term

' D. G. Morhof, Polyhistor Literarius. Philosophicus et Pradicus, 2 vols, 4th edn,

Lubeck, 1747 (Facsimile reprint: Aalen: Scientia, 1970) I, pp. 236-58.
' R. Rainolde, Foundacion of Rhetorike, London 1563 (Facsimile reprint: Delmar:
Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1977) Fol. xxxiijr.

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RHETORICA

already fridicates tiiat tiiis kfrid of poetiy is tiie product of rediscovery, not of ecriture but ratiier of reecriture. His works friclude
not only The Mackenzie Poems (1966), Praise Poems (1972), Monsters
(1977), but also: Colombo's Canadian Quotations (1974), Colombo's
Little Book of Canadian Proverbs, Graffitti & Other Vital Matters
(1975). The rhetoricity of such poetry has never been called uito
question, but its poeticity certauily has.

4. THE MULTIMEDIALITY OF COMMONPLACES

Commonplaces are not limited to the verbal arts but Uiclude aU

sorts of media. Classical rhetoric provides, above aU in
QumtiUan's Institutio Oratoria (Xl.Ui), a highly elaborate topic of
actio, i.e. of body language expressing a wide range of affections.
This provides the starting point for iconic representations in
kinesics, paintmg, and sculpture. A Renaissance Ulustration of it is
John Bulwer's Chironomia: or the Art of Maniml Rhetoric (1644),"
which he outlines by a series of "canons". Canon XXXVII, for
example, runs: "Both hands clasped and wrung together is an
action convenient to manifest grief and sorrow." In addition, a
number of chirogrammatic plates "paint" affections like
Admiratur, Hortatur or Dolebit in rhetorical postures of the fingers.
Bulwer's manual is fri fact an anthology of iconic commonplaces
which are paralleled by European practices of acting and painting,
above all in the multimedial theatre of the Jesuits Qacob Masen,
Gabriele Paleotti, Franciscus Lang).'^ Another type of
commonplace iconicity is provided by the large-format panel
pafritings of the Brueghel family Ulustrating Dutch Proverbs, the
Triumph of Death, or the Quarrel between Lent and Carnival in
thefr manifold appearances. All of them contain visual

" Modem edition: J. Bulwer, Chirologia: Or the Natural Language of the Hand &
Chironomia : or the Art of Manual Rhetoric (Carbondale: Southem Illinois University
Press, 1974).
See B. Bauer, "Multimediales Theater: Ansatze zu einer Poetik der
Synasthesie bei den Jesuiten", in H. F. Plett ed., Renaissance-Poetik / Renaissance
Poetics (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1994) pp. 197-238.

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Rhetoric and Intertextuality

323

metonymies which by selection and combination allow of multiple

interpictorial configurations. Here the rhetorical principle is
transferred to the medium of painting. The so-called
"Kunstbuch", a handbook of reproducible pattems for artisans
(goldsmiths, sculptors, silk-weavers) working with more or less
precious materials, displays a still broader spectrum of
appUcations. Whereas here the commonplace undergoes an
intermedial transformation, the rhetoric of musical commonplaces
has not yet been explored enough to aUow of substantial
conclusions. Johann Sebastian Bach's Inventionen certainly derive
thefr term from rhetoric, in the sense not of a method but of the
product oi invention. Whether these inventions are commonplaces,
is, however, doubtful. Such are rather present in the musical
citations, adaptations and franscriptions of the Modem and the
Postmodem Age: in Gustav Mahler's First Symphony (from the
canon "Frere Jacques, dormez-vous?") or in Igor Sfravinsky's
Pulcinella (from Pergolesi), in Edison Denisov's Schubert
paraphrases or in Alfred Schnittke's polystyUstic compositions. In
Ught music intertonal commonplaces have always been favourites.
To return to Bach again: he is himself the creator of a musical
commonplace: B A C H . Its history is intertonal, its genesis
intermedial: the conversion / fransformation of graphic signs
(Bach's proper name) into acoustic ones (a musical phrase).

5. THE INTERMEDIALITY OF COMMONPLACES

Commonplace intermediaUty is concemed, among others, with

the fransformation of words into pictures, of words into music, of
pictures into music, etc.and vice versa. It takes place on a
double axis of communication, the syntagmatic and the
paradigmatic one. Syntagmatic uitermediaUty extends from the
combination of two different media to the multimedial
simultaneity of the Gesamtkunstwerk. A syntagmatic hybrid in the
commonplace fradition is the emblem book in which picture
{pidura) and epigram (subscriptio) "embody" the same topic
expressed m the motto {inscriptio), the one by visualisation, the

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RHETORICA

otiier by verbaUsation. From Andrea Alciati's Emblematum Lihellus

(1531) onwards tiiis type of mtermedial commonplace-book
gamed steadUy in popularity and found Us way frito every
European country, mcludmg a multitude of pictures and
languages, from whence fr again became tiie source of pictorial
and Uterary friventions." A modem synopsis of emblematic topics
compUed by Arthur Henkel and Albrecht Schdne under tiie title
Emblemata may serve as a contemporary stiady-aid of
coirunonplaces for botii tiie Uterary and tiie art historian.'*
Paradigmatic intertextuaUty on the other hand describes the
substitution of sign configurations of different mediality. An
outstanding rhetorical gerue practised from antiquity to
postmodemism is ekphrasis or description for which European
poetics derives its Uterary legitimacy from Horace's dictum ut
pidura poesis and Sunonides's intermedial metaphors pidura
loquens, muta poesis referrfrig to poetry and pafritfrig respectively.
The commonplace nature of this exchange has been estabUshed by
standard procedural and material topoi which are recurrent
throughout history. The rhetoricization of poetics and art theory
furthered the interchangeable character of tiiese "sister arts" by
claimmg for them such common categories as imitation,
invention, expression, decorum, insfruction and delight, and, of
course, the "colours" of rhetoric, that is to say, the rhetorical
figures." A narrowly circumscribed repertoire of subject-matters
taken from the Bible and the classical authors facUitated thefr reproduction and thefr recognition in either medium. Perhaps the
most popular hybrid genre of this intermediaUty is the
technopaignion or carmen figuratum which arranges letters, verses
and stanzas of a poem ui such a way that it takes the shape of an
object, usually a column, an obelisk, a pyramid, an altar, a cross, a
wing, an urn, any kind of geometrical figure. This object poefry or
"konkrete Poesie", though in non-topical forms, continues to exist

For an analysis of a specimen of pictorial/verbal intermediality, see J. M.

Massing, Erasmian Wit and Proverbial Wisdom: Illustrated Moral Compendium for
Frangois I (London; Warburg Institute, 1995).
"Arthur Henkel and Albrecht Schone eds, Emblemata (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1976,
2nd edn, 1996).
" See W. Steiner, The Colors of Rhetoric: Problems in the Relation between Modem
Literature and Painting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).

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325

even nowadays. Its twofold perceptive appeal reaUses the

rhetorical ideal of ermrgeia or evidence, that is the co-presence of
both the sensual and the mteUectual faculties of the human mfrid.

6. T H E NORMATIVITY OF COMMONPLACES

The commormess of commonplaces is grounded in their

conventionaUty. Once they are firmly estabUshed they are rarely
called frito question. They are not universals, but dependent on
space and time, on culture and society, on class, education,
gender, age and the context of communication. Above aU they are
part of shared beliefs and values in a certain community. This acts
as a kind of guardian of such commonplaces by confirming them
time and again through repeated usage. From a rhetorical
viewpoint thefr acceptance is considered as decorum, that is in
accordance with the generaUy acknowledged social (behavioural,
ethical, aesthetic, etc.) norms. But this normativity is not valid
forever. When commonplaces become out-of-date and worn-out,
they become void of thefr content and degenerate frito
meaningless formulae. In order to stop this process of semantic
decay that finaUy leads to oblivion, systematic techniques have to
be appUed for thefr revitalisation. Such are avaUable from a
secondary rhetorical grammar of additions, omissions,
substitutions and permutations imposed on the extant material.
Its transformations may be categorised according to two stages of
intensity. The first, more moderate stage is based on the rhetorical
principle of variatio, well known from the tema con variazioni in
music (e.g., Brahms's Haydn Variations). It means the retaining of
the semantic nucleus of the commonplace sign configuration
while changing its adjuncts. Illustrations of such alterations are
paraphrases and abstracts, quotations and aUusions, collages and
centos. Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstem Are Dead
(1966) and his Fifteen Minute Hamlet (1976), Robert Rauschenberg's
Quote (1964) and Roy Lichtenstein's Cathedral (1969) may serve as
examples. Umberto Eco's famous novel II nome della rosa is a
pasticcio of learned commonplace material from mediaeval and

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RHETORICA

modem times. The second, more radical stage auns at tiie

deconstmction of pre-textual material by its semantic friversion.
Such a procedure takes place fri intertextual frony. This rhetorical
mode affects medial and fritermedial commonplaces aUke. When
m his picture L.H.O.O.Q. (1919) Marcel Duchamp adds a
moustache to Leonardo's famous La Gioconda, he deconstmcts a
commonplace icon of feminine beauty by adding to it a
characteristicaUy male feature (androgyny). J. S. Bach's
substitution of a secular text by a spfritual one in his secular
cantatas, as happened to a birthday cantata (to become Part 1 of
his Christmas oratorio), is called by musicologists sacred parodia.
And in Gay's Beggar's Opera (1728) the reversed procedure takes
place Ui the substitution of heroic texts by lower-class ones in
opera music largely composed by Handel (e.g., in his Tamerlano).
Both examples demonstrate the working of Uitermedial frony in
hybrid sign configurations. Their decomposition is foUowed up by
thefr recomposition. Commonplaces of any mediaUty can thus be
revitaUsed and thus obtain a new semantics that wUl perhaps
develop a commonplace normativity of its own.

7. T H E D E - A U T H O R I S A T I O N O F C O M M O N P L A C E S

In an intertextual rhetoric of commonplaces the author is neither a

creator ex nihilo nor a genius of nature laying claim to the
originality of his inspirationsuch are the postulates of ideaUstic
aesthetics. On the contrary, he is a discoverer or rather a refriever
of something existing before, of "second-hand Uterature", of
palimpsests or of "Utterature au second degre" (Genette).
Irrespective of its descent, be it high or low, this Uterature
represents the friviaUty of the trivium. It is offered for sale in a
"well-sorted emporium" (J. Huizinga) or, in the terms of early
capitalism, m The Royal Exchange (B.132) which is the title of a
commonplace-book by Robert Greene (1590). For here it is not
stocks that are traded but more or less "de-authorised" texts and
text segments. In this stock market the author is a broker or, in

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Rhetoric and Intertextuality

327

less metaphorical terms, a "mediator" (R. Barthes)." His

intertextualistic creativity is confUied to the reception and
fransmission of avaUable material. Thus his reputation diminishes
fri proportion with the emergence of the originality concept.
QuintUian had already complaUied that orators made collections
of sayings and arguments about subjects likely to recur in the
practice of thefr art instead of fortifying themselves with
methodological topoi by which to discover new arguments that
had never occurred to them before. In Sir PhUip Sidney's sormet
sequence Astrophel and Stella (1591) the male protagonist joins the
rhetorician's complaint by blaming himself for "oft turning others'
leaves" (1.7) and others for bringing "dictionary's method" mto
thefr rhymes; he concludes with the waming: "And sure at length
stol'n goods do come to Ught" (15.5-6, 119). In the twentieth
century the same practice finds new support, not only in
Colombo's "found poems" mentioned before but also, to name a
German example, in Max Bense's (*1910) concept of "kunstUche
Kunst", that is an art which owes its existence entfrely to
mathematical (synthetic and analytic) operations, expressed in his
works: Semiotik (1969), Nur Glas ist wie Glas (1970) and Kosmos
Atheos (1985). Richard McKeon names three stages in the
development: "Whereas the rhetoric of the Romans took its
commonplaces from the practical arts and jurisprudence and the
rhetoric of the Humanists took its commonplaces from the fine
arts and Uterature, our rhetoric finds its commonplaces in the
technology of commercial advertising and of calculating
machines." In Karel Capek's play R.U.R. {= Rossum's Universal
Robots) of 1921 robots take over the rule of the world. WiU the
(allegedly flawless) artificial intelUgence of computers supplant
the (allegedly faulty) natural mtelUgence of human beings in the
arts? Computer-generated poetry, music, and painting seem to
lead fri this direction. Computer generation attributes to poet,
composer and painter a new role: that of an engineer. In oral
culture the poet is a mnemonist, in manuscript culture a copyist,
in print culture a compiler, in elecfronic culture an intemet surfer.
" R. Barthes, "The Death of the Author" in his The Rustle of LangiMge, trans. R.
Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1986) pp. 49-55.
" R. McKeon, "Creativity and the Commonplace", Philosophy and Rhetoric 6
(1973) p. 207.

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RHETORICA

Common to tiiese roles and professions is the aspect of mediation,

frivention is recoUectiontiiat is the prerequisite of de-authorisfrig
the author in this "interrhetoric".

8. THE R E - C O G N I T I O N OF COMMONPLACES

Commonplaces as components of an Uitertextual rhetoric Uterally

exist ui common places, that is fri spatial, temporal, social and
other contexts shared by the common (wo)man. They are, in
Francis Bacon's terms, idols of the market-place, or fri terms of
Greek phUosophy, the expression of doxa. To the recipient a
commonplace offers an inestfrnable advantage: the appeal to
acedia or mental apathy. What is already known is the source not
of cognition but of re-cognition. It conffrms the famiUar, offers
release from the unexpected. It creates a sense of identification
and suppresses any idea of opposition. Recognition of the famiUar
in imitations and repetitions causes delight, certainly not of the
sophisticated sort but rather of a comfortable ease. Empathy may
be one consequence, another a loss of critical distance. The result
is at best intellectual stagnation, at worst a total surrender to the
dictatorship of commonplaces. These commonplaces are stored in
mnemonic inventories: verbal and non-verbal, visual and acoustic,
uni- and multimedial ones. In the twentieth century these
inventories may possess a mental, material, or digital co-presence
of existence. They enable the user to select among various kinds of
intertextuality and intermediaUty enforcing and reinforcing each
other. Without such continuous reinforcements communication is
endangered or even impossible. For commonplaces are stabiUsers
of social Ufe and mutual understandingand at the same time
open and hidden persuaders. The same holds true for the
perception of the arts in general. Innovations only take place when
commonplaces are radicaUy questioned. This happens when
discontinuities emerge. Then the pretended normativity of
commonplaces is deconstructed, and tiie continuous flow of
recognition is disrupted by a sudden shockas by the fortissimo
drumbeat in the Andante of Joseph Haydn's symphony no. 94 in

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329

G major. This does not mean an end to intertextuaUty but a

different way of approaching it. For the means of
deconsfructiondrumbeat, irony, coUageand the reactions to
themshock, critical distance, bewildermenthave been part of
this fritertextual rhetoric right from the start. A commonplace
rhetoric (poetics, art theory, music aesthetics) impUes both its
topicaUty and its a-topicality. This paradox is manifested in
Renaissance commonplace-books by title advertisements like
"choicest flowers" (B.IOO.B), "witty apophtiiegms (B.105.C),
"witty conceits" (B.106, B.126), or "sfrange definitions" (B.132),
including even a "defence of contraries" (B.151)certainly a
contradidio in adiedio. Its only reason is that commonplace
intertextuaUty is the necessary condition for the rise of the
uncommon, for any kind of artistic irmovation.

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