Figuratively Speaking: Rhetoric and Culture from Quintilian to the Twin TowersBloomsbury Academic, 2007 M05 25 - 160 pages Although 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
Results 1-3 of 3
... Proof , but in fact it lends our words credibility ... . If face and eyes and hands can do a lot to move men's minds , how much more can the face of the spoken word , as it were , do for us , when it is set to produce the effect we want ...
... proof of this is deduced from this place . The less it occupies itself , the more it occupies the student . ' By the thirteenth century , the space of the forum in ancient Rome had been replaced by a space in which man achieves ...
... proof of this lies in Plato's own use of rhetoric - in his myths and dialogues - and his association between rhetoric and seduction . The Phaedrus , as many have pointed out , speaks precisely of this crux . Even as Socrates is slam ...
Contents
Acknowledgements 7 | 9 |
Repetition versus Replication | 19 |
Figures of Speech and Thought in | 39 |
Copyright | |
6 other sections not shown