The Oxford Handbook of Quintilian

M. Fabius Quintilianus was a prominent orator, declaimer, and teacher of eloquence in the first century CE. After his retirement, he wrote the Institutio oratoria, a unique treatise in antiquity because it is both a handbook of rhetoric and an educational treatise. Quintilian's fame and influence are not only based on the Institutio, but also on the two collections of Declamations which were later attributed to him. The Oxford Handbook of Quintilian aims to present Quintilian's Institutio as a key treatise in the history of Greco-Roman rhetoric and to trace its influence on the theory and practice of rhetoric and education up to the present day. Topics include Quintilian's educational programme, his concepts and classifications of rhetoric, his discussion of the five canons of rhetoric, his style, his views on literary criticism, declamation, and the relationship between rhetoric and law, and the importance of the visual and performing arts in his work. His legacy is presented in successive chapters devoted to Quintilian in late antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Italian Renaissance, Northern Europe during the Renaissance, Europe from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and the United States of America. Other chapters examine the biographical tradition, the history of printed editions, and modern assessments of Quintilian. The contributors represent a wide range of expertise and scholarly traditions, offering a unique, multidisciplinary perspective.

About the Author

Marc van der Poel is Professor of Latin language and literature at Radboud Universty, The Netherlands, since 1999, where he teaches classical Latin; he has served in various managent functions, including head of the classics department and associate dean of the faculty of arts. He is currently the President of the international Society for the History of Rhetoric (2019-2022). His expertise includes Latin ancient literature, philological study of Latin texts, ancient rhetoric, and the history of rhetoric. He is preparing a new, critical edition with a commentary of Rudolph Agricola's De inventione dialectica . James J. Murphy is Professor Emeritus of Rhetoric at the University of California, Davis. Throughout his long career, his work has been focused on establishing historical connections and the continuity of classical rhetoric, in particular Latin rhetoric, in the intellectual, educational and political contexts of the postclassical Western world. A substantial part of his work revolves around the instruction of oral and written rhetoric from the Middle Ages in Europe until the present day in the United States of America. Michael Edwards is Honorary Research Fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London. He was formerly Professor of Classics at Queen Mary, University of London, the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, and the University of Roehampton, where he was Head of Humanities. He was Director of the Institute of Classical Studies in the University of London, and was President of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric. His primary research interest is in the Attic Orators, on whom he has published extensively. He is preparing an Oxford Classical Text of Isaeus and a commentary on Aeschines' speech Against Ctesiphon .