Alcuin's Disputatio de rhetorica: A critical edition with studies of aspects of the text, the stemma codicum, the didactic diagrams and a reinterpretation of sources for the problem of the duality of the dialogue

Abstract

Alcuin’s dialogue De rhetoricaenjoyed early success in Middle Ages and had a plethora of early copies in the ninth century. Diagrams concerning rhetoric were added to some of the earliest manuscripts and accompanied the dialogue through the ninth and tenth centuries, but were disregarded by modern editions of the work. The dialogue also has an uncommon combination of classical rhetorical precepts and explanation of the four cardinal virtues; these precepts and virtues had never been merged in such a way. In order to deal with the issues mentioned above, this thesis is divided into two main parts. The first deals mainly with Alcuin’s dialogue and its content. In this part, the controversial date of composition is taken into consideration, as well as the reception of the dialogue by modern scholars and their interpretation of how rhetorical precepts and cardinal virtues associate with each other in the dialogue. I give my own view of this issue and try to use Alcuin’s known sources to justify and undertand the presence of a discussion about virtues on a dialogue about rhetoric. Next I analyse the diagrams which were transmitted in some of the oldest manuscripts and consider their relation to the content of Alcuin’s text. I also collate the manuscripts and drew a stemma codicum of the manuscripts containing the diagrams. In the second part, I analyse previous editions of Alcuin’s work. A description of the readings found in the manuscripts, including two never used before, leads to the first stemma codicum of the dialogue. After this, a physical description of the manuscripts and justifications of each of the different readings adopted in this edition is offered before the edition itself