4. Lauer, 30:
“Here inventional acts took a hermeneutical turn as
they were deployed to interpret the Scriptures and
embellish sermons (La Tourneau). As George
Kennedy explained, preaching the Christian kerygma,
the good news, was a proclamation, where the truth
of the message had to be apprehended by the
listener, not proved by the speaker (Classical
Rhetoric 145-46) ...
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5. ...For Augustine, invention was an art of exegesis
that guided the discovery of meaning in the
scriptures.”
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6. Intention
Constructed Truth
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8. Lauer, 31 - 32:
“As McKeon explained, invention during this period
influenced three lines of intellectual development:
rhetorical theory, theology, and logic. ... P. Osmund
Lewry pointed out that at this time dialectic and
rhetoric shared the realm of the probable though one
did so in view of the truth and the other to play on the
emotions....
As three new medieval rhetorical arts developed (letter
writing, preaching, and poetry), the topics became
means for remembering, amplifying, and describing
material for these types of rhetoric.
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9. Lauer, 33:
Rhetorical invention as:
- methods for interpreting Scriptures
- scholastic method of inquiry: begin with questions and
apparent contributions, then use topics to sort out
theoretical problems by exploring their causes, effects,
definitions, etc.
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11. divine auctor
vs
human auctor (27)
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12. Minnis, 27:
The concern with authorial role or function -
sometimes termed the author’s ‘office’ (officium) - is
manifest by two facets of the author’s individuality
which the exegete sought to describe, his individual
literary activity and his individual moral activity.
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13. Constable,
Plagiarism and Forgery
in the Middle Ages
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14. Movement toward Science:
“The Old Logic used topics for discovery while
analytics provided judgment. The New Logic separated
logic and dialectic, making rhetoric the counterpart of
dialectic and separating scientific proof from probable
proof.” (33)
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16. Lauer:
The Renaissance revived classical rhetoric, reigniting
debates of the nature, purposes and epistemologies of
invention. ...
Thomas Wilson:
- Judicial Rhetoric: status not as initiating act of question
posing, but as stating of foundational/joint principle.
- Demonstrative rhetoric: special topics of persons,
deeds, things.
- Deliberative discourse: special topics such as honest,
profitable, pleasant, easy, hard, necessary.
- Special topics for pathos and ethos.
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17. Ramus: invention
belongs to logic, not
rhetoric.
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18. Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning:
The invention of speech or argument is not properly an invention:
for to invent is to discover that we know not, and not to recover
or resummon that which we already know: and the use of the
invention is no other but out of the knowledge whereof our mind
is already possessed, to draw forth or call before us that which
may be pertinent to the purpose which we take into our
consideration. So as to speak truly, it is no invention, but a
remembrance or suggestion, with an application; ... that it hath
already obtained the name, let it be called invention. (58) [Lauer
36]
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19. Bundy:
What is the role of fantasy?
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20. Bundy on the pathological view:
We must also reckon among pertinent materials an ethical
and pathological view derived from the Middle Ages,
involving a distrust of imagination as the dominant power
accounting for the excesses of the insane and the morbid.
When the Renaissance, following a medieval tradition which
goes back to at least St. Augustine, attempted to classify
human activities in terms of the mental powers involved and
asserted that the lunatic, the lover, and the poet were of
imagination all compact, the student of poetry was under the
necessity either of accepting and explaining the kinship or of
making certain important distinctions. (537)
Saturday, February 2, 13
21. Bundy on the pathological view:
We must also reckon among pertinent materials an ethical
and pathological view derived from the Middle Ages,
involving a distrust of imagination as the dominant power
accounting for the excesses of the insane and the morbid.
When the Renaissance, following a medieval tradition which
goes back to at least St. Augustine, attempted to classify
human activities in terms of the mental powers involved and
asserted that the lunatic, the lover, and the poet were of
imagination all compact, the student of poetry was under the
necessity either of accepting and explaining the kinship or of
making certain important distinctions. (537)
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23. George Gascoigne on Originality and Craft:
The first and most necessarie poynt that euer I founde
meete to be considered in making of a delectable
poeme is this, to grounde it upon some ine inuention.
For it is not inough to roll in pleasant woordes,... vnless
the Inuention haue in it also aliquid salis. By this aliquid
salis I meane some good and fine deuise, shewing the
quicke capacitie of a writer.
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24. Ronsard on inventionary imagination and
montrosity:
When I tell you that you should invent great and
beautiful things, I do not mean those fantastic and
melancholy inventions which have no more relation the
one to another than the disconnected dreams of a
lunatic or of some sick person extremely afflicted by
fever, to whose imagination on account of its being
injured there are represented a thousand monstrous
forms without order or connection; but your
inventions, for which I can give no rule because of their
spiritual character, will be well ordered and arranged,
and, although they seem to excel those of the common
people, they will, nevertheless, be such that they can be
easily conceived and understood by every one. (542)
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