Figuratively Speaking—Rhetoric And Culture from Quintilian to the Twin Towers

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 provides a common denominator among western cultures from Cicero to the present. The central idea is that, in the western tradition, figurative speech - the 'flowers' of rhetoric - provides a fundamental way for language to articulate concerns that define a culture or community. 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.

Sarah Spence is Professor of Classics at the University of Georgia.