The Early Modern Interdisciplinary Graduate Forum (EMIGF) is a monthly event hosted by the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies (CRRS) at the University of Toronto. EMIGF is a platform for PhD candidates, post-docs, fellows, and recent graduates to deliver papers in an informal setting. Our mandate is to provide junior and emerging scholars with the opportunity to present work in progress, and to facilitate dialogue on current topics in early modern research across the disciplines. EMIGF meetings are well attended by graduate students, faculty, and fellows from the early modern community at the University of Toronto and beyond.
Our sixth meeting for 2018-2019 will be held on Tuesday, March 12th from 4:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. in the Victoria University Common Room, Burwash Hall (89 Charles Street West, rear entrance).
Moderator, Rachel Stapleton, Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Toronto
Joan Lluís Vives (1493-1540) is well known for his pedagogical treatises such as De disciplinis (1531) and Exercitatio Linguae Latinae (1539). This paper examines one brief but valuable, overlooked pamphlet on the education of princes: the Satellitium siue Symbola (1524), addressed to Mary Tudor, by then Princess of Wales. It contains 239 proverbs or ‘symbols’ followed by a short commentary, whose purpose is to protect the life of those who embrace their hidden wisdom. Besides the context in which the book was written, some peculiarities of the main editions, and an explanation for the chosen title, this paper approaches three fundamental topics: the fragility of existence, virtue and moral perfection, and governance. References will be made to Pythagoras and, substantially, to Erasmus. The former might have inspired the title of the book, whereas the latter may have served as a model for the content of several passages.
This presentation investigates Ben Jonson’s critique of forensic rhetoric in Volpone. Voltore’s argument in defense of Volpone is a masterclass in tightly structured forensic argument. By following the principles laid out in widely available rhetorical manuals such as Cicero’s De Inventione, the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium, and Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria, Voltore successfully turns victims into perpetrators, substitutes invective for testimony, utilizes multiple false witnesses, and renders innocence silent. Volpone thus stages Renaissance debates over the critique of forensic rhetoric in Plato’s Gorgias and its defense by Cicero and Quintilian. Bonario’s critique of false witnesses as “multitude and clamour” echoes Socrates’ refusal to convince a corruptible “multitude”. Bonario’s and Celia’s appeals to their own conscience echo Socrates’ assertion that only self-exoneration matters. In an arena of corrupt speech, Jonson stages Socratic silence as evidence of innocence, upending the Renaissance investment in Ciceronian rhetoric to mediate between conscience and the law.
