By studying the funeral orations of Renaissance Italy, McManamon analyzes Italian humanism as a characteristic phase in Western rhetorical culture. By examining hundreds of funeral speeches, he provides a valuable overview of major civic issues and humanistic themes, adding significant new material to the history of rhetoric. When Italian humanists spoke at funerals, they took this unique opportunity to press for their reformist goals.

Originally published in 1989.

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Sometime around 1446 A.D., Cardinal Prospero Colonna commissioned engineer Battista Alberti to raise two immense Roman vessels from the bottom of the lago di Nemi, just south of Rome. By that time, local fishermen had been fouling their nets and occasionally recovering stray objects from the sunken ships for 800 years. Having no idea of the size of the objects he was attempting to recover, Alberti failed.
For most of the next 500 years, various attempts were made to recover the vessels. Finally, in 1928, Mussolini ordered the draining of the lake to remove the vessels and place them on...