L’Agudeza y arte de ingenio e il Cannocchiale aristotelico: il ruolo del De arte rhetorica di Cipriano Soarez

Abstract

This essay deals with the relationship between wit and rhetoric existing in Baltasar Gracián’s Agudeza y arte de ingenio and Emanuele Tesauro’s Cannocchiale aristotelico. It focuses on Cipriano Soarez’ De Arte Rhetorica, a latin textbook capillary spread in Jesuit schools in seventeenth century that has been mentioned in various works upon the two baroque theorists as an important reference for their rhetoric learning. The work tries to highlight the actual role played by this textbook in their cultural formation by Jesuits and in the elaboration of
their original theory of wit.