Creating Anti-Eloquence

Humanist defences of rhetoric and poetry often took the form of attacks on scholastic language. In humanist polemics, scholastic modes of speech and vices of language reflected the inner corruption and immorality of the scholastics themselves. Epistolae obscurorum virorum (1515–1517) represents in the figure of the obscure men the illiterate scholastic monster, whose language is stuffed with grammatical and rhetorical vices and overall tastelessness. The poetics of the text rests on the violation of rhetorical rules and ideals in the form they were conveyed in ancient and humanist epistolaries and rhetorical handbooks. The stylistic vices here studied are seven in number: barbarism, obscurity, obscenity, loquacity, vices of letter-writing, the ailing tongue, too literal reading and carnal speech.