Figuratively Speaking Rhetoric and Culture from Quintilian to the Twin Towers
, by Spence, SarahNote: Supplemental materials are not guaranteed with Rental or Used book purchases.
- ISBN: 9780715635131 | 0715635131
- Cover: Paperback
- Copyright: 5/25/2007
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 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.