Michael Kleine
Information and Pricing
978-1-932559-85-9 (paperback, $20.00); 978-1-932559-86-6 (hardcover, $45.00); 978-1-932559-87-3 (PDF, $14.99) © 2006 by Parlor Press. 156 pages, with illustrations, index, and bibliography.
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About This Book
Listen to the "Searching for Latini" episode on "Arts and Letters," UALR Public Radio (11 May 2014).
In Searching for Latini, Michael Kleine recounts the quest of a rhetorician and writing teacher to discover and celebrate the significance of a thirteenth-century rhetorician who has been excluded from American versions of rhetorical history—Brunetto Latini, the teacher of Dante. Kleine argues that Latini should be rescued from obscurity, not only because of the literary status of his student but also because of Latini’s promotion of Ciceronian rhetoric during the dawn of the Renaissance and the relevance of his work to contemporary teachers of writing.
Kleine writes of his pilgrimage reflectively and poignantly. His search reminds us all that, in rescuing others from obscurity, we might even rescue ourselves.
What People Are Saying
Kleine’s investigation into the life and achievements of Brunetto Latini contribute not only to our understanding of this important figure in the history of rhetoric, but also to what such discoveries mean personally to Kleine as a teacher of writing. This weaving of scholarship and personal reflection is engaging and illuminating. In addition to its explicit contributions to the history of rhetoric, Searching for Latini is also an example of the art of indirection. I have never read an account that better illustrates the value of studying not only rhetoric and composition, but also the history of rhetoric with composition than Searching for Latini.
—Richard Leo Enos in Rhetoric Review (Fall, 2008)
About the Author
Michael Kleine is a professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where he teaches courses in first-year writing, composition theory, rhetorical theory, language theory, and science writing. His published articles have appeared in Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Technical Communication Quarterly, Communication and Religion,Journal of Business and Technical Communication, JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory, Journal of Medical Humanities, Journal of Teaching Writing, The Writing Instructor, ex tempore (a music- theory journal), Journal of Psychological Type, Centrum, and Composition Forum. He has published book chapters in The Philosophy of Discourse and (Re)Visioning Composition Textbooks. He has also published poetry on Italian art and literature in Poem and The Formalist.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
The Genesis of a Pilgrimage
Toward a Motive and a Map
Part I: In Search of Answers Among the Books
1 Brunetto Latini, Notary and Writer
Pre-Exile Praxis—Brunetto and the Brown Ink of Civic Writing
Post-Exile Writing—Latini and the Dark Ink of Literary Posterity
2 Latini, Teacher of Dante, By His Student Damned
The First Path—Latini’s Teaching of Dante
The Second Path—Dante’s Damnation of His Teacher
The Third Path—Material/Historical Transcendence of the “Treasure”
3 The Currency of Latini’s Rhetorical Treasure
Latini’s Vernacularization and Application of Cicero
Latini’s Contributions to the Ars Dictaminis and the Rhetoric of Writing
A Rhetorician for the Here and Now
Part II: Toward an Open Book of My Own
4 On Foot in Florence
5 The Illuminating Presence of Julia Bolton Holloway
Julia’s Story
Latini’s Obscurity and the Revival of Interest in Him
Latini and Orality
Latini and Literacy
Latini as Rhetorician
Latini and the Canon of Arrangement
Latini and a Curriculum for Ethical and Mediatory Applications of Rhetoric
6 Homecoming and an Open Book
Works Cited
Index
About the Author
