Commonplaces and Everyday Wisdom in Henri Estienne

Cowling, David

Abstract

The vernacular works of the celebrated Hellenist, humanist, and printer Henri Estienne (1531-1598) provide a good case-study for the use of commonplace material in polemical contexts in the later sixteenth century. In what follows, I will understand the ‘commonplace’ not in its strict and technical sense as an element in a tightly structured compendium of arguments derived from authoritative (typically classical) sources and designed to persuade by means of an appeal to the shared knowledge of an elite, highly educated culture, but rather as a feature of the everyday language and experience of 16th-century readers and writers that typically enjoys low cognitive salience but a correspondingly high potential for persuasion by means of its appeal to ‘commonsense’ knowledge.

Citation

Cowling, D. (2011). Commonplaces and Everyday Wisdom in Henri Estienne. In D. Cowling, & M. B. Bruun (Eds.), Commonplace culture in Western Europe in the early modern period I : reformation, counter-reformation and revolt (113-127). Peeters Publishers

• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2011
• Deposit Date: Sep 13, 2011
• Publisher: Peeters Publishers
• Pages: 113-127
• Series Title: Groningen studies in cultural change
• Series Number: 39
• Book Title: Commonplace culture in Western Europe in the early modern period I : reformation, counter-reformation and revolt.
• Chapter Number: 7
• Publisher URL: http://www.peeters-leuven.be/boekoverz.asp?nr=8956
• Additional Information: Series: Groningen Studies in Cultural Change, 39.