The subject of this book is literary rhetoric which is treated both in a historical outline and a systematic concept, implemented in analyses of literary texts of all ages and languages.
Rhetoric and Irony: Western Literacy and Western LiesLiteracy
This pathbreaking study integrates the histories of rhetoric, literacy, and literary aesthetics up to the time of Augustine, focusing on Western concepts of rhetoric as dissembling and of language as deceptive that Swearingen argues have received curiously prominent emphasis in Western aesthetics and language theory.
Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature, 2nd Edition
With the exception of the first chapter, which is an enlightening but pretty dry history of book publishing, the author writes with an enganging and personable style that's highly unusual for an "academic" book. I picked it up thinking that I'd browse through it and found myself reading it cover to cover. There's a bit of the usual feminist/critical studies rhetoric but it's neither bombastic enough nor pervasive enough to dampen the book's accessibility nor its credibility.
Study of the rhetorical codes and conventions in terms of which debates were conducted is currently a major area of historical and literary enquiry, and Peter Mack’s Elizabethan Rhetoric provides a wealth of new information about what was taught and how these conventions were exploited in a range of Elizabethan prose texts, personal memoranda, court depositions, sermons and political and religious pamphlets. This important book will be invaluable for all those interested in the culture, literature and political history of the period.
The term ‘rhetoric’ describes the effective use of language, usually to persuade or influence. Frequently set up in opposition to ‘truth’ or ‘plain speech’, it has attracted much critical debate from ancient philosophy to current literary theory. Examining both the practice and theory of this controversial concept, Jennifer Richards looks at: historical and contemporary definitions of the term ‘rhetoric’uses of rhetoric in literature
