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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... identification of language with power and authority through its deployment by the statesman - all speak to key values of the Roman republic , which include the ability to use the Latin language in such a way that the values of the Roman ...
... identification between rhetoric and stability and so an affil- iation with the ideals of the empire . The orators ... identifying goodness with correctness and truth with language . Through a wonderful sleight of hand , Cicero's origin ...
... identification of Ajax with both Dido and Aeneas suggests that Ovid is doing more than asking us to read him in a Vergilian context . By suggesting that Ajax is both Dido and Aeneas Ovid suggests , rather , that we should see this hero ...
Contents
Acknowledgements 7 | 9 |
Repetition versus Replication | 19 |
Figures of Speech and Thought in | 39 |
Copyright | |
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