The volume presents a cultural history of renaissance rhetoric with special emphasis on literary theory with its aspects of imagination (inventio), generictheory (dispositio), style (elocutio), mnemonic architecture (memoria), representation (actio) (with Shakespeare's works as illustrations). Special attention is given to the intermedial rhetoric of painting and music and the rhetorical ideology of culture.

Heinrich F. Plett is full professor (chair) of English literature at the University of Essen, Germany, and director of the Centre for Rhetoric and Renaissance Studies at Essen University.