Medieval vernacular works of rhetoric

Abstract

This article treats vernacular works of three of the four medieval forms of applied rhetoric – the ars poetriae (the art of versification), the ars dictaminis (the art of composing letters), and the ars arengendi (the art of composing civic and lay speeches). The fourth, the ars praedicandi (the art of preaching), will not be a focus here, as treatises that deal with the increased need to preach to the people in the vernacular were chiefly written in Latin, even if at times writers of such Latin treatises, like the Franciscan Christian Borgsleben, were themselves translators.