There is some material very relevant to your concerns, though not on
Spenser, in Joel Altman's *The improbability of Othello: rhetorical
anthropology and shakespearean selfhood* (Chicago UP, 2010), which
discusses Agricolan and Ramist dialectic fairly extensively. There is also
a forthcoming volume on Ramism and the Liberal Arts from Ashgate edited by
Emma Wilson and Steven Reid, and a companion to Ramism from Brill edited by
Emma Wilson and Sarah Knight, both of which will no doubt contain useful
material when they appear. I understand that Emma Wilson is also preparing
a history of logic from 1543 (the year of Ramus' first publications) to
c.1700. Later this year, Peter Mack's new *History of Renaissance Rhetoric,
1380-1620* will be published by Oxford UP, as part of the Oxford-Warburg
studies series; it will survey the several thousand texts on rhetoric
published in the period (in an estimated 15,000 editions) and will
therefore presumably address the 'advanced argumentation' in which you are
interested. Also part of the Oxford-Warburg series is Howard Hotson's
*Commonplace learning: Ramism and its German ramifications, 1543-1630*
(2007), which, although about Germany, is useful in explaining the detailed
developments of Ramist and Philippo-Ramist logic in a university context.
Michael Hetherington
Magdalene College
Cambridge
On Feb 22 2011, Kim Coles wrote:
> I suspect that the publication of William Temple's response to Sidney's
> Apology by J. P. Thorne has set to rest any questions of Ramist
> influence; but I could be wrong.
>
>What fun!
>
>Best,
>Kim
>
>Sent from my iPhone
>
>On Feb 22, 2011, at 7:49 AM, Kenneth Gross <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> a propos of this thread: there's Forrest Robinson's 1972 book, The
>> shape of things known; Sidney's Apology in its philosophical
>> tradition, which traces in fierce detail what he sees as Ramist
>> underpinnings of Sidney's essay. That might link, in turn, to
>> Spenser. I have no idea whether this book is taken seriously any
>> more, however.
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 7:10 AM, Kimberly Anne Coles <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>> To this fine list I might add:
>>>
>>> Jardine, "The Place of Dialectic Teaching in Sixteenth-Century
>>> Cambridge," Studies in the Renaissance 21 (1974).
>>>
>>> W. S. Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500-1700 (New York:
>>> Russell & Russell, 1961), old(er) but still good.
>>>
>>> A. Fraunce, The Shepherd's Logic, English Linguistics (A Collection of
>>> Facsimile Reprints), ed. R. C. Alston (Menston, England: Scolar Press,
>>> 1969), which is useful in discovering how Laurence Charderton might
>>> have instructed in rhetoric at Cambridge.
>>>
>>> And Ethel Seaton's introduction to The Arcadian Rhetoricke by Abraham
>>> Fraunce, ed. Seaton (Westport, Conn: Hyperion Press, 1979).
>>>
>>> Since Gabriel Harvey was one of the first lecturers on Ramism at
>>> Cambridge, I one can assume Spenser's interest as well (see Three
>>> Proper and wittie, familiar Letters: lately passed between two
>>> University men).
>
|