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It has long been supposed that rhetoric was a common subject for study throughout medieval Europe. A number of writers, among them Atkins, Berdan, Howell and Manly, have gone so far as to postulate what might be called a medieval English rhetorical tradition. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the manner in which the first English language discussion of rhetoric was probably composed, in order to assess its possible relation to an English rhetorical tradition. Medieval rhetoric was, of course, primarily the Latin rhetoric of Cicero. The Rhetoric of Aristotle, if it was studied at all, was studied in Latin, probably in the Latin of William of Moerbeck. The Confessio Amantis of John Gower, written about 1390, thus holds a unique position in English literary history, containing as it does the first known discussion of rhetoric in the English language.
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