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. |
From inside the book
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... Figures of speech are forms of figurative language that affect the shape of the words ; figures of thought are those that do the same with the ideas . Literary examples are often easy to spot : ' Full fathom five my father lies ' uses the ...
... Figures , then , surface in the Roman rhetorical tradition not as adornments to a speech , an afterthought , but as the very basis of rhetoric itself - its lifeblood . Figures become associated with Cicero , and figures become the part ...
... speech or style ( Institutio Oratoria 9.1.15-17 ) . For Quintilian , the notion that figures of speech and thought can intersect is not just a remote possibility ; it is a certainty . " There are some Figures of Speech which are only ...
Contents
Acknowledgements 7 | 9 |
Repetition versus Replication | 19 |
Figures of Speech and Thought in | 39 |
Copyright | |
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