Figuratively Speaking

Rhetoric and Culture from Quintilian to the Twin Towers

Sarah Spence

• Publisher: Bristol Classical Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781849667555
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Weapons of Mass Creation: Repetition versus Replication
• 2. Looking Back: Figures of Speech and Thought in the Roman World
• 3. Dwelling on a Point: Rhetoric and Love in the Middle Ages
• 4. The Chiastic Page: The Rhetoric of Montaigne’s Essais
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index