Ciceron et Seneque dans la rhetorique de la Renaissance.

Mouchel has written a richly informative and insightful book, marred by some annoying flaws, beginning with the title which suggests a study of the whole Renaissance when in fact the book covers only the late Renaissance, from about 1550 to about 1650. But that coverage is more than enough to make this an important work. For, as Mouchel proves, late Renaissance Ciceronianism was not the sterile wasteland that Remigio Sabbadini briefly dismissed in his classic Storia del Ciceronianismo, but a fertile field for interesting discussions of rhetoric, language, style, and eloquence.

The reason is simple. Despite the criticisms of such luminaries as Poliziano, Erasmus, and Muret, Ciceronianism remained a force throughout the Renaissance because Cicero never ceased to be the chief model of classical Latin prose style. Even in areas which seem distant from the frontlines of the Bellum Ciceronianum, Ciceronianism continued to exercise its influence. For instance, as Mouchel shows, Sebastiano Corrado's critique in 1552 of the Greek of Thucydides can be effectively read as a criticism of the anti-Ciceronian Latin of Tacitus. More importantly, those who proposed an alternate stylistic model or opted for a stylistic eclecticism or rejected the need for any stylistic model or condemned the influence of rhetoric or wished to substitute the vernacular for Latin all took Cicero as the prose standard which they had to supercede or debunk. Whatever was not broadly Ciceronian could easily be classified as broadly anti-Ciceronian. This is clearly true of Just us Lipsius' advocacy of the Senecan style which forms the main counterpoint to Ciceronianism in Mouchel's book.

Now Ciceronians and their opponents came in all shapes and sizes. The virtue of Mouchel's book is its detailed discussion of the many species of late Renaissance Ciceronianism, most of which were in one way or the other discordant with one another. Not only well known figures of later Ciceronianism such as Caussin, Kerckerman, and Manuzio take their place on Mouchel's stage, but also many other lesser known rhetorical theorists, such as Giulio Negrone, Friederich Taubman, Edmund Campion (as author of a De imitatione rhetorica), and Tarquinio Galluzzi. Indeed, Mouchel's notes and annotated bibliography are a treasure-trove of details, quotations, and summaries of the ideas of these minor authors. In the case of some of them, such as the preacher Francesco Panigarola, Mouchel provides not only the most extensive treatment of their opinions to date, but probably also the most extensive treatment anyone living today will ever see short of reading the authors themselves.

Mouchel rightly gives a great deal of space to analyzing the philosophical, historical, scholarly, and even psychological perspective of the Senecanism propounded by Lipsius and similar theorists. Mouchel mostly avoids, I am happy to report, reliance on the hackneyed category of the style coupe. Instead, he structures his narrative around concepts drawn from the contemporary literature which explains literature in terms of just measure, emphasis, appropriateness, perspicuity, sublimity, brevity, asperity, obscurity, and acuity.

My one large objection to Mouchel's approach is his tendency to contrast the Ciceronians with those whom he calls the Competents, i.e., critics of a consciously rhetorical style. "Competents" is not a Renaissance term. Mouchel borrowed it from a modern classicist's study of Aristotle and he never identifies or quotes any of the Competents who loom so large in his analysis (Scholastics? Early proponents of the Scientific Revolution such as Francis Bacon? Religious critics?). Though Renaissance Ciceronians did have to refute the charge that their language distorted contemporary reality, in the absence of names and texts one gets the feeling that Mouchel's Competents are at least in part strawmen. I am also not convinced by Mouchel's assumption, with little proof, of the large influence of St. Augustine's De Doctrina Christiana. My own research would suggest otherwise.

Another criticism I have of Mouchel is that though he is a very elegant writer with a flair for the single sentence that beautifully illuminates a problem or an idea, he tends to run on too long about whatever he is discussing. Giganticism is probably an unavoidable disease of the French these, but in this case it is ironic that the author did not heed the advice on brevitas which he discusses at length in the book.

The ungenerous format of the book also detracts from the pleasure of reading it. Too many lines are squeezed onto the page. The small print of the numerous block quotations make them difficult to read. Greek words generally, but especially in the block quotations, are printed in so tight and small a format that one has trouble distinguishing letters. Throughout the book confusion reigns between the minuscule letter "l" and the number "i" and between them and the capital letter "L." One even encounters sentences which end on one line and are followed on the next by their punctuation mark. Another technical flaw worth complaining about is the unreliability of the index which is totally inadequate for thorough searching.

Yet, these blemishes should not obscure Mouchel's great contribution. He has plowed deeply into the rhetorical literature of the later Renaissance and has now put into scholarly circulation many neglected texts; he has thrown new light on Lipsius's Senecanism; he has many wise and perceptive things to say about late Renaissance rhetoric and style; and his notes and bibliography are important resources for any further research on late Renaissance rhetoric and stylistics.