Jordan Loveridge
My research is primarily situated in the history of rhetoric, especially the rhetorical culture and theories of the European Middle Ages. More specifically, my research focuses on how the Middle Ages understood the civic aspects of classical rhetoric: for example, it's relationship to politics and deliberation, to modes of pedagogical instruction intended to shape civic behavior, and to modes of sensory persuasion and contingent reasoning.
My in-progress book manuscript, A Probable Logic: Emotion, Sensation, and Persuasion in Medieval Rhetoric and Poetic (supported by a 2017 International Society for the History of Rhetoric Research Fellowship) argues that the fundamental change in the rhetorical and poetic theories of the 12th and 13th centuries is an increased emphasis on probability and verisimilitude, achieved through appeals to less-rational modes of reasoning such as sensation, emotion, and authority. As I have argued in my recent (2017) article “Rhetorical Deliberation, Memory, and Sensation in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas,” Aquinas sees memory and sensation as key elements of rhetorical reasoning, because they are the human faculties that provide the raw material of probabilistic judgment. In this project, I expand on my past work to better understand the place of these and other modes of non-rational reasoning and appeal in the poetic and rhetorical doctrines of the 13th century. Drawing from artes poetriae, epic poems, Scholastic philosophy, commentaries on logical and rhetorical theory, and other texts, this project argues that in the 13th century rhetoric was increasingly positioned as a counterpart to dialectic that rationalized and imposed order upon less-than-rational forms of persuasion and reasoning.
Supervisors: Kathleen S. Lamp, Elenore Long, and Maureen Daly Goggin
My in-progress book manuscript, A Probable Logic: Emotion, Sensation, and Persuasion in Medieval Rhetoric and Poetic (supported by a 2017 International Society for the History of Rhetoric Research Fellowship) argues that the fundamental change in the rhetorical and poetic theories of the 12th and 13th centuries is an increased emphasis on probability and verisimilitude, achieved through appeals to less-rational modes of reasoning such as sensation, emotion, and authority. As I have argued in my recent (2017) article “Rhetorical Deliberation, Memory, and Sensation in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas,” Aquinas sees memory and sensation as key elements of rhetorical reasoning, because they are the human faculties that provide the raw material of probabilistic judgment. In this project, I expand on my past work to better understand the place of these and other modes of non-rational reasoning and appeal in the poetic and rhetorical doctrines of the 13th century. Drawing from artes poetriae, epic poems, Scholastic philosophy, commentaries on logical and rhetorical theory, and other texts, this project argues that in the 13th century rhetoric was increasingly positioned as a counterpart to dialectic that rationalized and imposed order upon less-than-rational forms of persuasion and reasoning.
Supervisors: Kathleen S. Lamp, Elenore Long, and Maureen Daly Goggin
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Papers by Jordan Loveridge
This essay argues that medieval bestiaries are dependent on and best understood through a process of rhetorical hermeneutics indebted to Augustine’s theory of interpretation. The essay suggests that texts such as the Aberdeen Bestiary leverage the instability of allegorical and the clarity of tropological representation to blur the line between human and nonhuman,encouraging the reader to reflect on predatory human-animal relationships and act to reduce actions that impact the natural world.
Historians of rhetoric continue to debate the relative degree of transmission and implementation of the progymnasmata during the Middle Ages. This essay intervenes in this debate by analyzing Matthew of Vendôme's Ars versificatoria (Art of the Versemaker), showing that the treatise emphasizes the construction of probable assertions within a system of rhetorically-informed poetic composition. While past scholarship has shown Matthew's indebtedness to Ciceronian and Horatian rhetoric and poetics, this essay argues that progymnasmata exercises focused on probability and verisimilitude may have also influenced Matthew, suggesting the continued influence of the exercises within rhetorical and grammatical education during the 12th century.
This is a pre-publication proof copy; please let me know if you would like a copy of the final published essay.
Colloquy as an instance of Anglo-Saxon rhetorical instruction in
the spirit of the Greco-Roman progymnasmata. Through a comparison
of the text with classical sources such as Priscian’s
adaptations of Hermogenes and Isidore’s Etymologies, this
essay concludes that Ælfrīc knew of the progymnasmata and
that these exercises served as the basis for rhetorical instruction
that emphasized Benedictine ideals of communal concord
through trained speaking and writing. Drawing on the common-
place of the three estates, the Colloquy demonstrated the ideal 15
role of rhetoric in Anglo-Saxon society while modeling traditional
progymnasmata exercises such as fable composition,
impersonations, and comparisons.
This is a pre-publication proof copy; please let me know if you would like a copy of the final published essay.
a way that is expansive and inclusive; instead, for newcomers or those with alternative histories, aims, vision, values, and perspectives, the inertia of infrastructure is more likely to be experienced as infrastructural breakdowns. We ask: What might wisdom look like in these “structured” encounters? That is, what is the intellectual work of rhetoric on those thin ledges where institutional chronos shapes and limits possibilities for knowledge work and working relationships among people who likely would not have otherwise met? In response, we advance a framework for a constructive approach to infrastructure—one that prizes deliberation over rationalization and actively attends to the warrants underlying calls for public engagement. We first consider the relationship between infrastructure, rhetorical wisdom, and the imagination of possibilities, then lay out a framework for cultivating rhetorical wisdom in response to infrastructure breakdowns.
Book Reviews by Jordan Loveridge
Teaching Documents by Jordan Loveridge
This essay argues that medieval bestiaries are dependent on and best understood through a process of rhetorical hermeneutics indebted to Augustine’s theory of interpretation. The essay suggests that texts such as the Aberdeen Bestiary leverage the instability of allegorical and the clarity of tropological representation to blur the line between human and nonhuman,encouraging the reader to reflect on predatory human-animal relationships and act to reduce actions that impact the natural world.
Historians of rhetoric continue to debate the relative degree of transmission and implementation of the progymnasmata during the Middle Ages. This essay intervenes in this debate by analyzing Matthew of Vendôme's Ars versificatoria (Art of the Versemaker), showing that the treatise emphasizes the construction of probable assertions within a system of rhetorically-informed poetic composition. While past scholarship has shown Matthew's indebtedness to Ciceronian and Horatian rhetoric and poetics, this essay argues that progymnasmata exercises focused on probability and verisimilitude may have also influenced Matthew, suggesting the continued influence of the exercises within rhetorical and grammatical education during the 12th century.
This is a pre-publication proof copy; please let me know if you would like a copy of the final published essay.
Colloquy as an instance of Anglo-Saxon rhetorical instruction in
the spirit of the Greco-Roman progymnasmata. Through a comparison
of the text with classical sources such as Priscian’s
adaptations of Hermogenes and Isidore’s Etymologies, this
essay concludes that Ælfrīc knew of the progymnasmata and
that these exercises served as the basis for rhetorical instruction
that emphasized Benedictine ideals of communal concord
through trained speaking and writing. Drawing on the common-
place of the three estates, the Colloquy demonstrated the ideal 15
role of rhetoric in Anglo-Saxon society while modeling traditional
progymnasmata exercises such as fable composition,
impersonations, and comparisons.
This is a pre-publication proof copy; please let me know if you would like a copy of the final published essay.
a way that is expansive and inclusive; instead, for newcomers or those with alternative histories, aims, vision, values, and perspectives, the inertia of infrastructure is more likely to be experienced as infrastructural breakdowns. We ask: What might wisdom look like in these “structured” encounters? That is, what is the intellectual work of rhetoric on those thin ledges where institutional chronos shapes and limits possibilities for knowledge work and working relationships among people who likely would not have otherwise met? In response, we advance a framework for a constructive approach to infrastructure—one that prizes deliberation over rationalization and actively attends to the warrants underlying calls for public engagement. We first consider the relationship between infrastructure, rhetorical wisdom, and the imagination of possibilities, then lay out a framework for cultivating rhetorical wisdom in response to infrastructure breakdowns.