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Synopsis
A historical survey of the origins, growth and decline of the "plain style", a mode of theoretical discourse that reflected the mode of expression exemplified by Christ. Peter Auksi draws on an array of classical, biblical, patristic, medieval and Renaissance primary sources to explain this complex ideal of spiritualized rhetoric. Locating the roots of the plain style in secular and phiosophic classicism, Auksi examines theories on classical rhetoric from Demetrius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus to Cicero and Quintilian. he shows how biblicists deliberately transformed a heathen mode, and demonstrates that rhetoric served a pragmatic function among the church fathers. The author also discusses the different responses of renaissance translators, rhetors, polemicists and humanists to the stylized medieval inheritance, paying particular attentin to the issue of sacred plainness in preaching.
