Exempla Loquuntur: the political role of examples in the rhetorical work of Fadrique Furio Ceriol

Abstract

The manual of Valencian humanist Fadrique Furio Ceriol Institutionum Rhetoricarum libri tres (Louvain, 1554) presents abundant material of exemplification to illustrate his rhetorical theory, with a volume that exceeds 500 examples (the term 'example' understood in its sense of 'text or clause that is quoted to verify, illustrate or authorize an assertion ', not in reference to the concept of rhetorical exemplum ‘case or event that happened in another time, which is proposed, either to be imitated and followed, if it is good and honest, or to be avoided if it is bad’). To demonstrate that the Valencian humanist uses these examples not only with an illustrative function of the prescriptive rhetoric, but also as a prominent ideological resource in the framework of a global political project, in the present work we study these intertexts classifying them according to their typology, extension and topic and then, focusing on their content, we analyze the choice and manipulation by Furio in relation to the necessary qualities in the statesman as exposed in his political science treatise El Concejo, i Consejeros del Príncipe (Antwerp, 1559).