Metamorphoses of Rhetoric
Classical Rhetoric in the Eighteenth Century

Edited by Otto Fischer & Ann Ohrberg
September 2011
Uppsala University
Distributed By
ISBN: 9789198008104                        
213 pages
$67.50 Paper original

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The volume Metamorphoses of Rhetoric: Classical Rhetoric in the Eighteenth Century puts focus from diverse angles on the status of classical rhetoric in European late eighteenth-century culture. The contributions to this volume span a variety of subjects and demonstrate the role of classical rhetoric within a number of fields, ranging from aesthetics and philosophy to politics and pedagogy. They show how rhetorical theory, as well rhetorical praxis, was trnasformed, and yet in many respects remained the same during the period. The authors focus on three different European rhetorical cultures - France, Germany and Sweden - with their particularities and similarities. Together the contributions to this volume demonstrate that classical rhetoric remains a decisive factor throughout the eighteenth century, and that the idea of a "death" of rhetoric must in many respects be dismissed. At the same time it becomes clear that although classical rhetoric in many ways remains recognizable it is the subject of a series of metamorphoses, leaving it significantly altered, yet substantially identical to itself.

 

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