Table of contents : List of plates Preface and acknowledgements Introduction 1. Meaning and Means 1.1 The rhetorical approach to education 1.2 Learning through commented texts 1.3 Imitation of speech, style, and action 1.4 The exercises of rhetorical invention 2. The meaning of the past 2.1 Historical fictions 2.2 Exercising historical invention 3. Let us now praise famous men 3.1 Encomiastic lives 3.2 Models of sanctity 3.3 Exercising biographical invention 4. Traitor and translator 4.1 Reference and representation 4.2 The conventional wisdom of translators 4.3 Sacred wisdom 4.4 Words and deeds 5. Texts and pre-texts 5.1 Invention and representation 5.2 Convention and invention 5.3 Truth and convention Notes Index