A study and critical edition of the "Alanus" Commentary on pseudo-Cicero "Rhetorica Ad Herennium": ’Accessus’ and Book One. (with Latin text)

The "Alanus" Commentary, composed in the late twelfth century, probably in northern France, explicated the text of the Ad Herennium, a manual covering all five departments of oratory: inuentio, dispositio, pronuntio, memoria and elocutio. The Ad Herennium was believed to be a work of Marcus Tullius Cicero, which was partially responsible for the considerable popularity it achieved as a school text in the later Middle Ages. The commentary itself is attributed to an "Alanus," interpreted by some as the famous twelfth-century poet Alain de Lille. The various versions of the commentary have presented difficulties for potential editors. These can be categorized as the "proto"-version, the "long" version and the "short" version.
The thesis consists of a study of the commentary and a critical edition of the glosses of the accessus of the "short" and "long" versions and book one of the "long" version. The introduction relates this commentary to others of the period and discusses the work that modern scholars have begun or completed on these commentaries. The question of authorship is dealt with in Chapter one, as well as the sources of the commentary and its subsequent influence. The author's approach in explicating the text is also treated. Chapter two gives detailed descriptions of the witnesses to the text, and the relationships among the witnesses are discussed. The text of the commentary has been established from a full collation of five manuscripts for the accessus and two for book one. The apparatus criticus furnishes a detailed report of the significant variants readings; the apparatus fontium, the various sources.