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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... present breaking news , such as Columbine ) , to speak instead of Martha Stewart's arrest , or J.Lo's marriage . The juxtaposition of items intended to encourage trust and present objectivity with messages that are rooted in opinion ...
... present things differently from the way they are usually understood . Taken as such , amplification in Montaigne's hands becomes both the key figure to persuasion and , even more important , a figure that is innately linked to chiasm ...
... present and future . Bradstreet's use of chiasm not in relation to texts of the past but , rather , in rela- tion to the future is telling : from the medieval interest in amplification as dwelling in and on the present we move to the ...
Contents
Introduction | 9 |
Repetition versus Replication | 19 |
Figures of Speech and Thought in | 39 |
Copyright | |
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