In the era of the struggle of Christianity with ancient Paganism was a science of Christian oratory, reached the brilliant development in the IV and V centuries Mr. e .. A prominent representative of the art of public speaking - John Chrysostom. In a theoretical sense, almost medieval rhetoric adds nothing to the ancient development, kept the rules of Aristotle, and later theorists (in the West - Cicero), and only processes them in the calculation mainly in the writing of letters (messages) and sermons. Everywhere happens tightening the requirements to comply with these rules.
By the IV century, the scope of rhetorical rules coincided with the very concept of literature: the Latin literature in the Middle Ages rhetoric replaces poetics firmly abandoned the medieval tradition. Theorists wondered: Do materials, which may be engaged in the literary text? On this account there were many different opinions. In general, won maximalist trend: the competence of the rhetoric, at least until the XIII century, was part of any material. In keeping with this art, the author, before creating the product, should form a clear and rational presentation (intellectio) the alleged material. In medieval rhetoric preserved the teachings of the conviction as a major problem and the three tasks ( teach, encourage, entertain lat. Docere, movere, delectare).
The creation of the work, in turn, is divided into three parts or stages (three of the five main elements in the ancient list.)
Invention (Lat. inventio), is actually finding the ideas of the creative process. It extracts the whole object of his ideological potential. It requires that the corresponding author's talent, but in itself is a purely technical devices. Its laws determine the attitude of the writer to his material, and they imply that every object, every point can be clearly expressed in words, and exclude all the untold, like clean impressionistichnost form. In its main aspect, known as amplification (Lat. amplificatio), she describes how to move from implicit to explicit. Initially, amplification was understood as a qualitative shift, but in medieval theory and practice, it usually meant the quantitative expansion, usually so-called variety of methods of variation: the most developed of them, a description (Lat. descriptio), has repeatedly been subjected to the codification and central Latin literary aesthetics , in the XIII century, without any changes passed in the genre novel, becoming one of the main lines. Disposition (Lat. dispositio), prescribe the location of parts. Here, the general trends of the system show up with difficulty. Medieval rhetoric never seriously addressed the problem of the organic mix of parts. It is limited to a few empirical and the most common prescriptions, identifying some aesthetic ideal rather than a means to achieve it. In fact, from the medieval poet's extraordinary creative power required to overcome this obstacle and to achieve harmony and balance in a long text. Often, it comes out of the situation, by building the available items in accordance with certain numerical proportions: this practice does not fit into the ancient rhetoric, but in the eyes of a medieval clergyman justify its existence numerical Art, especially the music (musica). Elokutsiya (Lat. elocutio), clothe idea, and found eksplitsirovannye through the invention and organized by the disposition, in linguistic form. She served as something of a standard style, divided into a number of parts, the most developed of them is that the deals, decorate, decorated syllable (Lat. ornatus), ie mainly the theory of rhetorical figures.
Adopting the ideas of ancient mentor, the creators of the rhetoric of XI-XIII centuries, focusing on the amplification and the teachings of the decorated syllable in which they see the essence of the written word: their activity is limited primarily to the transfer and streamline those expressions, which in its original form already exist in everyday language, they describe them in functional terms, as the code syllable types with a high degree of probability.
In the 1920-1950 biennium. many medievalist, including ER Kurtsius believed that the rhetorical model is applicable to all areas of literature, and made of this hypothesis is far-reaching conclusions. In fact, rhetoric undividedly dominant in Latin literature and its influence on poetry in the national language was long, but very uneven [source not given 51 days].