Figuratively Speaking

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.