Figuratively Speaking: Rhetoric and Culture from Quintilian to the Twin TowersAlthough rhetoric is a term often associated with lies, this book takes a polemical look at rhetoric as a purveyor of truth. Its purpose is to focus on one aspect of rhetoric, figurative speech, and to demonstrate how the treatment of figures of speech provides a common denominator among western cultures from Cicero to the present. The central idea is that, in the western tradition, figurative speech - using language to do more than name - provides the fundamental way for language to articulate concerns central to each cultural moment. In this study, Sarah Spence identifies the embedded tropes for four periods in Western culture: Roman antiquity, the High Middle Ages, the Age of Montaigne, and our present, post-9/11 moment. In so doing, she reasserts the fundamental importance of rhetoric, the art of speaking well. |
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... context that reminds the reader of the opening of the second book of the Aeneid : there , as here , the men are gathered , awaiting a speech . Even as Aeneas identifies himself often through his genealogy , so Ajax begins by attaching ...
... context , since his efforts that led to the beauty described above are equally rhetor- ical even as they shed light on the meaning and understanding of the concept of ' dwelling ' . Under Suger's watchful gaze , the abbey church of ...
... context of appropriateness . Although Erasmus likens copia to a stream , it is a golden stream , with an emphasis on the preciousness of that abundance . De Copia is a discussion of the method of amplifi- cation ; as such it offers an ...
Contents
Acknowledgements 7 | 9 |
Repetition versus Replication | 19 |
Figures of Speech and Thought in | 39 |
Copyright | |
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