The composition of ethos in epistolary rhetoric. Between Erasmus of Rotterdam and Francisco Rodrigues Lobo

Abstract

This essay points out some characteristics of epistolary rhetoric in the rediscovery of the classical tradition by the humanists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. How the gender readapts itself to the different historical and cultural circumstances and how the letter no longer requires the rigidity of medieval ars dictaminis and will then include the universe of Cicero’s sermo familiaris. Thus, we intend to observe how Erasmus conceptualizes the notion of a letter in the sixteenth century, reaching the concept of variety, and a century later, the Portuguese Rodrigues Lobo shows indications that this redefinition had already met a collective consensus that conditions the epistolary practice to a particular rationality courtesan.