Law, Rulership, and Rhetoric: Selected Essays of Robert L. Benson - Softcover

Benson, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0268022348 ISBN 13: 9780268022341

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014

Synopsis

Robert L. Benson (1925–1996), professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, was one of the most learned and original medievalists of his generation. At his untimely death he left behind a considerable body of unpublished writings, many of which he had revised and refined and in some cases presented in lectures and at conferences over many years. The best and most significant of these previously unpublished writings are collected in this volume.

The essays in Law, Rulership, and Rhetoric span Benson’s entire career from 1955 to 1994. They comprise a rich collection covering a vast range of topics in political, intellectual, legal, and ecclesiastical history, rhetoric, and historiography. Art historians will find the three essays on medieval images of rulership and medieval art valuable, and literary scholars will be interested in the essays on, among others, Boncompagno da Signa. The volume concludes with several occasional, historiographical essays, including a spirited defense of Ernst Kantorowicz against Norman Cantor and an entertaining talk on “the medievalist as literary hero.” The volume begins with a brief biographical sketch and appreciation of Benson by Horst Fuhrmann.

About this title

About the Authors

Robert Louis Benson (1925-1996) was a professor in the department of history at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Benson conducted undergraduate studies at Princeton University and earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley under the direction of the distinguished German Èmigré scholar, Ernst H. Kantorowicz. He served in the Army Air Corps during World War II. A scholar specializing in German history of the High Middle Ages, He took teaching positions at Barnard College, Wesleyan University, and the Free University of Berlin before accepting a position in 1974 with the UCLA Dept. of History. Benson taught at UCLA for the next twenty years, retiring in 1994. Soon after retiring, Benson accepted a teaching position at Yale University.

Loren J. Weber is a partner with O'Melveny & Myers LLP. He was previously lecturer of history at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

My wife found this shopping bag at the Grande Maison de Blanc in Beverly Hills, a reputable establishment doing business for the last 128 years. The only unusual feature of the shopping bag is a Latin inscription, “URBI ET ORBI.” Literally translated, the phrase suggests that their wares are directed “To the city and the world”―in other words, that they are willing to sell to anyone. Change of scene: A few months ago in the mail room of the history department at UCLA, I encountered a colleague who gave me an interesting tidbit of very recent news. I asked him, “Is this widely known?” “Urbi et orbi,” he replied. From this, it is obvious that “urbi et orbi” is a cliché. Still, if it were only a cliché, I would not waste your time―and mine―on it today. But the joining of urbs and orbis, of “city” and “world,” was also a rhetorical commonplace―what one called in Latin a locus communis, or in Greek a koinos topos. Topoi were brief phrases, figures of speech, ideas, and so forth―anything that might serve as a building block in composing an oration. They could be memorized, written down, learned, and taught. For example, the “topos of affected modesty” was much recommended in antiquity, especially for the introduction (exordium) to an oration, as a way of gaining the audience’s goodwill. And “affected modesty” has not gone completely out of fashion even now.

In a brilliant study published in 1948, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, Ernst Robert Curtius elucidated the history and significance of topoi. There he showed how the topoi inform the style and thought of Latin letters―and of various vernacular literatures―from the very beginnings into the modern world. In a society like that of the late Roman Republic, which rewarded rhetorical skill so richly, the topoi were indispensable. To be sure, the end of the Republic starkly reduced the need for judicial or forensic oratory, and virtually eliminated―apart from the panegyric―the practice of political oratory. Still, since rhetoric permeated all of Latin literature, including poetry, the topoi survived the decline and fall of oratory:they remained useful in the world of the Roman Empire. With suitable changes and additions, they adapted to the Empire’s conversion to Christianity, and lasted thereby through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, well into modern times. Whoever wrote in Latin needed models and ornaments for prose or verse. Indeed,handbooks of composition sometimes included lists of topoi. If we imagine the totality of Latin literature as a kind of shop, the topoi constituted its principal wares: they filled,as it were, the stockroom. In short, topoi recur constantly in Latin poetry and prose across the centuries.

The countless reappearances of these topoi might seem to signify an antiquarianism, a slavish lack of creative originality, characterizing the centuries that still depended so heavily on the classical past. One should not leap to this conclusion. To study the history of a topos is to discover not only the continuity of the classical tradition but also the innumerable and innovative ways in which classical thought was refracted and transformed in the new contexts which appropriated it. In this sense, the history of a topos can reveal the vitality of the conceptual and stylistic traditions that shaped the Latin culture of the Middle Ages. Briefly put, the topoi illuminate the thought-world of the medieval writers who used them.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0268022348
• ISBN 13: 9780268022341
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 382
• Editor: Weber Loren