Friendship and Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: The Linguistic Performance of Intimacy from Cicero to Aelred covers approximately 1,200 years of literature. This is a book on "medieval literature" that foregrounds language as the agent for cultivating medieval friendship (from the first century BC to c. 1160 AD) in oratorical, ecclesiastical, monastic, and erotic contexts. Taking a different approach than many works in this area, which search for the lived experience of friends behind language, this book stands apart in looking at friendship's enactment through rhetorical language among classical and medieval authors.

R. Jacob McDonie is Associate Professor of Literatures and Cultural Studies at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley. He has published widely on medieval friendship in Latin religious contexts.

Friendship and Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: The Linguistic Performance of Intimacy from Cicero to Aelred covers approximately 1,200 years of literature. This is a book on "medieval literature" that foregrounds language as the agent for cultivating medieval friendship (from the first century BC to c. 1160 AD) in oratorical, ecclesiastical, monastic, and erotic contexts. Taking a different approach than many works in this area, which search for the lived experience of friends behind language, this book stands apart in looking at friendship's enactment through rhetorical language among classical and medieval authors.

Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1: Performing Friendship in Cicero's De amicitia Chapter 2: Early Christian Friendship: Tradition and Innovation in the Fourth Century Chapter 3: Making Love in Language: Friendship in the Carolingian Era Chapter 4: The Drama of the Saints: Friendship in the Prayers and Letters of Anselm of Canterbury Chapter 5: Rhetorical Friendship in the Letters of Heloise and Abelard Chapter 6: The Ethics of Rhetoric and Friendship in the Epistolae duorum amantium and Related Works Chapter 7: "The Effort itself Is Great": Performance, Sympathy, and Authority in Aelred of Rievaulx's De spiritali amicitia Bibliography