Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

EPILOGUE
pastoral now exists side by side with the Latin pastourelle which emerges from
imitation of Provencal poetry.
The absence of secular drama from the medieval stage spelt neglect of Roman
dramatists. Seneca's tragedies had considerable literary influence in the late
Roman period, conspicuously in Boethius' Consolation of philosophy, in which
the verses constantly echo Senecan odes. But subsequently the plays are known
only to widely-read scholars, to an Aldhelm in Anglo-Saxon England, to a
Eugenius Vulgarius in ninth-century Italy, and later to a Liutprand, a Papias, a
Richard de Fourneval. The fame of Seneca comes later with the Italian humanists,
the Elizabethan dramatists and with Corneille. Of the comic playwrights,
Plautus throughout the Middle Ages remained less known even than Seneca,
but by contrast Terence was a favourite author, because of his philosophic
reflections on the human condition. Terence inspires the dramas of the tenthcentury
nun Hrotsvitha, whose six plays on Christian themes reflect in structure
and dialogue the influence of the Andria and to a lesser degree the Eunuch and
Adelphoe. In the twelfth century Ovidian narrative-comedies become popular,
deriving their themes from Plautus and Terence through prose-summaries of the
plays. Vitalis of Blois wrote an Amphitruo and an Aulularia, Matthew of
Vendome a Miles gloriosus; an unknown author's Pamphilus et Gliscerium
derives from the Andria. The Renaissance established a vogue for the Roman
comic playwrights as for Seneca; translations of their plays, and original Latin
plays based on them, were performed in Venice and other Italian cities.
Cicero dominates the study of rhetoric. He was a special favourite of the
Christian apologists Lactantius and Jerome, whose seven polemical treatises
echo Ciceronian phraseology and techniques. Gradually, however, Cicero's
speeches fell out of general currency, though in the Carolingian period the bestread
scholars like Sedulius Scottus and Lupus of Ferrieres knew one or another
of them; Christian eloquence had different objectives. Augustine initiated
Christian theory on the art of preaching; epistolary style, extending more
generally into rules for artistic prose, became important from the eleventh
century: and the theory of poetic composition was also extensively discussed.
The bases of instruction for all three were the De inventione of Cicero and the
ad Herennium, known familiarly as Rhetorica prima and Rhetorica secunda;
Horace's Ars poetica is also important for poetic theory. The De inventione
fathers innumerable manuals between the fourth and thirteenth centuries. Of
odier classical treatises, Cicero's Brutus remained unread, but his De oratore and
Quintilian's Institutio were known to the best scholars from Lupus of Ferrieres
to John of Salisbury, whose contemporary Ulrich of Bamberg remarks: In
rethorica educandus legat pritnam Tullii rethoricam, et librum ad Herennium, et
TuUium de oratore, et causas Quintiliani [the ps.-Quintilian] et Qw.ntiU.anum de
oratoris institutione ' So far as rhetoric goes, the person to be instructed should
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