Figuratively Speaking: Rhetoric and Culture from Quintilian to the Twin TowersA&C Black, 2013 M11 20 - 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. |
Contents
| 8 | |
| 9 | |
Repetition versus Replication | 19 |
Figures of Speech and Thought in the Roman World | 39 |
Rhetoric and Love in the Middle Ages | 67 |
The Rhetoric of Montaignes Essais | 97 |
Conclusion | 123 |
Notes | 129 |
| 135 | |
| 141 | |
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Common terms and phrases
Abbot Suger adaptation Aeneas Aeneid Ajax amplification ancient rhetoric ancient Rome argues argument asserts Augustine Augustine’s Baudrillard becomes body brevitas C’est caritas central century chiasm chiastic Cicero Ciceronian commoratio context create culture culture’s debate define delay Dido Dido and Aeneas discussion empire enables epic Essais example fact figurative language figurative speech figures of speech figures of thought Frame Geoffrey Herennium hesitation and correction high Middle Ages history of rhetoric humanistic identifies Iliad linked look Lucretius means medieval memory Metamorphoses metaphor Montaigne Montaigne’s mora move movie offers orator Ovid Ovid’s Peacham Plato play poem poetry protagonist Pyramus and Thisbe Que·l Quintilian reading repetition rhetorical treatises rhyme Roman Rome says sense song space speak stanza story style Suger suggests things tion tradition trans tropes troubadour truth turn twelfth Ulysses understanding University Press Vergil Vergilian vernacular words writes