In this volume an expert team seeks to establish whether medieval and early Renaissance rhetorical theory and practice were innovative or derivative (from Graeco-Roman rhetoric), by looking at a unique range of key topics that underlie the postmodern culture of our own day: the medieval and early Renaissance study of Cicero's ''De inventione'' and the ''Rhetorica ad Herennium''; the textual history and manuscript transmission of Cicero's rhetorical works; the Latin and vernacular traditions of Ciceronian rhetoric in late medieval Italy, Ciceronian rhetoric and ethics, dialectic, law, memory theory and practice, literary theory, Latin composition textbooks, poetics, narration, and imitation, thematic preaching, the art of letterwriting, and the art of assembly oratory in late medieval Italy. There is a valuable appendix of illustrative material from the Cicero commentaries not available elsewhere.