'Le sottili cose non si possono bene aprire in volgare': Vernacular oratory and the transmission of classical rhetorical theory in the late medieval Italian communes

The renaissance of interest in classical rhetoric in late medieval Italian literary culture stands at the heart of many accounts of the origins of humanism as an educational programme and set of critical practices. This article, however, seeks to examine the spoken rather than the written word and the vernacular rather than Latin transmission of speechmaking know-how in the Due- and Trecento, with particular attention paid to the social and political contexts of the rhetorical revival. The aim is to move beyond some of the more narrowly configured definitions of rhetorical humanism and demonstrate how the increasing diffusion of rhetorical knowledge in the vernacular led to its democratization as translators and adapters 'opened' increasingly complex parts of rhetorical theory for a lay audience. Rather than delaying the onset of full-blown humanism, understood as an elite Latin-based enterprise, the vernacularization of rhetorical material functions as a keystone in the transmission of knowledge derived from classical culture for applied usage by a much wider social constituency. © 2009 Maney Publishing.