Thanks, Rob, for your addition to my comment.  It prompts me to think again about Ramus and his place in the history of method.  Another bibliographical reference that may be useful to some (especially those not schooled in philosophy): vol. 3 in the History of Western Philosophy published in pb by Oxford, "Renaissance Philosophy," by Brian Copenhaver and Charles B. Schmitt, gives 10 solid pages to Ramus and puts his "simple method" in context.  The article by Meerhoff that Rob cites isn't in the bibliography, but Meerhoff's 1986 book is: "Rhetorique et poetique au 16e siecle en France: Du Bellay, Ramus, et les autres."

Cheers, Jon Quitslund
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: rstillma <[log in to unmask]>
> Another turn in Jon's taste for Francophilia might direct some long overdue  
> attention to Kees Meerhoff's "Logic and Eloquence: A Ramusian Revolution?," 
> Argumentation 5 (1991), 357-74. The question mark in Meerhoff's title is all 
> to the point, as he maps those "methodical" tendencies already (as Jon notes) 
> so strong in the culture before Ramus--Agricola to Melanchthon to Sturm. Or to 
> make the point more briefly, Howell's old book on logic and rhetoric badly 
> needs rewriting.
> 
> As for Sidney's tendency to play both sides against the middle, that would 
> have been a tough game to entertain with Ramus, who allowed no middle ground 
> in the war against Aristotle. (George W. style, it's a case of "with us or 
> against us"). Ramus's very exclusivity might well have seemed too partisan 
> (and therefore provincial) to the cosmopolitan Sidney, for whom the crucial 
> critical game was less playing the sides against the middle (or so it seems to 
> me), than playing the middle to assume and subsume both sides.
> 
> Best wishes, Rob Stillman
> 
> >===== Original Message From Sidney-Spenser Discussion List 
> <[log in to unmask]> =====
> >Anne’s reference to W. J. Ong’s book (“Ramus, Method, and the Decay of 
> Dialogue”) takes me back to my last year in college, ‘60-61, when I was 
> reading widely in search of organizing ideas for a thesis on the sermons of 
> Lancelot Andrewes.  Ong’s book turned out to be a long detour on the way to 
> what actually got written that year, but the food for thought in it was worth 
> the detour.  (And maybe Andrewes, who preceded Spenser at both Merchant 
> Taylors and Pembroke Hall, was a necessary detour on my error-strewn way to 
> Spenser studies.)
> >
> >Incidentally, Ong’s work on Ramus and what he called the “pedagogical 
> juggernaut” strikes me now as possibly the earliest Francophile and 
> theory-driven break with the conventions of positivist scholarship.  Like 
> Anne, I haven’t looked into it for decades, but I’ll bet there’s value in that 
> first book even now.
> >
> >Surely Philip Sidney was aware of Ramus, and of the challenge he posed to the 
> Aristotelian (and Ciceronian) tradition(s) in the teaching of logic and 
> rhetoric.  Gabriel Harvey took a side in that quarrel, and Abraham Fraunce did 
> so somewhat later: I think Fraunce’s “Arcadian Rhetorike” deserves more 
> attention than it has received from Sidneians – and Spenserians, for that 
> matter.
> >
> >I tend to doubt that Sidney was devoted, in a partisan way, to anything he 
> found in the books of Ramus or his imitators.  Was there any debate in which 
> Sidney didn’t play both sides against the middle?  The analytical and 
> dichotomizing turn of his mind might, however, owe a lot to Ramus’ example of 
> a tendency that was already strong in the culture before he came along.
> >
> >Cheers, Jon Quitslund
> >
> > -------------- Original message ----------------------
> >From: [log in to unmask]
> >> The great man, of course, although anti-Ramist and I don't think I
> >> remember anything on Sidney--but it's been decades-- is Walter Ong.
> >> There's a nice piece with Ramist
> >> connections in Spenser Studies by Tamara Goeglin which might have some
> >> good references, and for older stuff there's a section in the "Cabeen"
> >> bibliography of French literature's volume on the 16th century, ed.
> >> Raymond La Charite[accent aigu], under the "Anglo-French relations"
> >> heading. My Spenser Studies are in part up at my Barnard office or I'd
> >> give the volume number. Number 20? Anne P.
> >>
> >> > I recall that Forrest Robinson's The Shape of Things Known: Sidney's
> >> Apology in its Philosophical Tradition (Harvard, 1972) explores some of
> >> the Ramist roots of the Apology.
> >> >
> >> > Ken
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > On Tue, 2 Jan 2007, Molekamp, Femke wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> I wondered if anyone could particularly recommend any works on Sidney
> >> and Ramism, besides Wilbur Samuel Howell's Logic and Rhetoric in
> >> England
> >> >> 1500-1700?
> >> >> Thanks,
> >> >> Femke
> >> >> Femke Molekamp
> >> >> Research Student
> >> >> Early Printed Collections
> >> >> The British Library
> >> >> St Pancras
> >> >> 96 Euston Road
> >> >> London
> >> >> NW1 2DB
> >> >> [log in to unmask]
> >> >> 
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