Page "Rhetoric" Paragraph 77

One influential figure in the rebirth of interest in classical rhetoric was Erasmus ( c. 1466-1536 ).

His 1512 work, De Duplici Copia Verborum et Rerum ( also known as Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style ), was widely published ( it went through more than 150 editions throughout Europe ) and became one of the basic school texts on the subject.

Its treatment of rhetoric is less comprehensive than the classic works of antiquity, but provides a traditional treatment of res-verba ( matter and form ): its first book treats the subject of elocutio, showing the student how to use schemes and tropes ; the second book covers inventio.

Much of the emphasis is on abundance of variation ( copia means " plenty " or " abundance ", as in copious or cornucopia ), so both books focus on ways to introduce the maximum amount of variety into discourse.

For instance, in one section of the De Copia, Erasmus presents two hundred variations of the sentence " Semper, dum vivam, tui meminero.

" Another of his works, the extremely popular The Praise of Folly, also had considerable influence on the teaching of rhetoric in the later 16th century.

Its orations in favour of qualities such as madness spawned a type of exercise popular in Elizabethan grammar schools, later called adoxography, which required pupils to compose passages in praise of useless things.