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
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... true that is possible to persuade an audience either way , it is also true that what matters , finally , is the end result : what is created by the orator's delivery , be it spoken or written . How this end is achieved is perhaps less ...
... true that many postmodernists would deny that any such standard is or could ever be available . But if by ' objective ' one means a standard of validity and value that is backed up by the tried - and - true proce- dures and protocols of ...
... true knowl- edge and cause it to appear there where it is appropriate , for the best speakers are but infants compared to me , and I know who is my patron in this matter , provided that that [ knowledge ] remains safe in my heart so ...
Contents
Introduction | 9 |
Repetition versus Replication | 19 |
Figures of Speech and Thought in | 39 |
Copyright | |
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