Dear list, Another article relevant to this topic and not yet mentioned, 
which explicitly sets out to "look at the kind of logic that was taught at 
Oxford and Cambridge in 1590" (so, too late for Spenser's undergraduate 
career but still within his lifetime and in any case instructive, with the 
caveat that developments in terms of who was in and out of favour or 
fashion in logic at the time were very rapid) is E.J. Ashworth, 'Logic in 
Late Sixteenth-Century England: Humanist Dialectic and the New 
Aristotelianism', Studies in Philology, 88:2 (1991), 224-36. Here and 
throughout her extensive work on the history of logic, Ashworth approaches 
humanist logic with an air of knowing disappointment at its failure to 
realise what she sees as the very real achievements of scholastic logic and 
its movement away from rather than towards the advances of modern formal 
logic. This disapproval tends to inflect her judgments fairly heavily. She 
is extremely scathing about Howell's book.

I might also mention, though I cannot remember its terminus a quo, William 
Costello, S.J., The Scholastic Curriculum at Early Seventeenth-Century 
Cambridge (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958). There is also 
Peter Mack's 'Le Ramisme à Oxford au XVIe Siècle', in Ramus et 
l'Université, ed. by Michel Magnien and Kees Meerhoff, Cahiers V.L. 
Saulnier, 21 (Paris: Éditions Rue d'Ulm, 2004), 121-30; and Guido Oldrini's 
La Disputa del Metodo nel Rinascimento: Indagini su Ramo e sul Ramismo 
(Florence: Le Lettere, 1997), in which pp.227-308 address 'the 
particularity of English Ramism', offering a thesis in marked opposition to 
that of the work of Mordechai Feingold (mentioned earlier in this thread by 
Colin Burrow).

Alexander Richardson's *The Logician's School-Master* may be worth 
considering as a primary text; although not published until 1627, it was 
made up from lecture notes of his students from the Cambridge of the 1590s. 
It represents a interesting later stage of Ramism than that represented in 
MacIlmaine, Fenner, Fraunce etc. The satiric presentation of the Ramists in 
the Parnassus Plays (where, of course, the Ramist character is subtly 
called Stupido) is also of interest.

Sorry that my suggestions here and in my previous post are rather Ramus 
heavy: this is partly my particular bias (I have a chapter on Abraham 
Fraunce in my PhD thesis) and partly a reflection of the particularity of 
the English as opposed to the European situation, but is also, as is 
becoming clearer in this thread, a more general bias in the scholarship on 
early modern English logic.

Michael Hetherington
PhD Candidate
Magdalene College
Cambridge


On Feb 23 2011, Stillman, Robert E wrote:

> And to piggy-back on Carol's note, I would add to the mix Walter Ong's 
> nicely critical Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue, together with 
> Paolo Rossi's Logic and the Art of Memory (which puts Ramus in the 
> philosophical context of Renaissance debates about language), and Kees 
> Meerhoff's fine interrogation of the old story about Ramus, rhetoric and 
> dialectic (cf. W. S. Howell's badly out-of-date book)in "Logic and 
> Eloquence: A Ramusian Revolution?," Argumentation 5 (1991): 357-74. See 
> too Meerhoff's Entre Logigue et Litterature (Paradigme, 2001). Temple's 
> commentary on Sidney's Defence (splendidly edited by John Webster) 
> supplies good evidence about how a contemporary Ramist read (and misread) 
> Sidney's poetics. What it suggests, in turn, about Sidney's writing or 
> reading practices is a topic about which it would be well to speculate, 
> cautiously.
>
>Rob Stillman
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List 
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Carol Kaske Sent: 
> Tuesday, February 22, 2011 9:07 PM To: [log in to unmask] 
> Subject: Re: Question About Spenser's University Education
>
>Also Gabriel Harvey's role as an informal educator of his younger friend 
>must be taken into account. Thanks to Virginia Stern, Lisa Jardine, and 
>others, we know a lot about what Gabriel Harvey knew and considered 
>interesting. I seem to recall that Harvey was interested in Ramus, who 
>represented an educational innovation at the time, so Slpenser might 
>have jumped on this band-wagon. On the Ramusian revolution, see Wilbur 
>Samuel Howell's book (old) and Jardi
>ne's work (fairly recent).
>Carol
>
>On 2/22/2011 1:35 AM, Valery Rees wrote:
>> For his extra-curricular interests in Cambridge you might like to look
>> at my article in Spenser Studies 24 (2009) 'Ficinian Ideas in the Poetry
>> of Edmund Spenser', especially its Appendix: 'Availability of the Works
>> of Ficino and Plato and their Place in the Cambridge Curriculum'.
>>
>> Best wishes
>>
>> Valery Rees
>>
>