Cato vs Valerius/Men vs Women: Rhetorical Strategies in The Oppian Law Debate in Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita

2021 ◽  
pp. 351-372
Author(s):  
T. Davina McClain
Keyword(s):  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Ab Urbe Condita

“The Truth of Reliable Tradition”: Saadya Gaon, Arabic Rhetoric, and the Challenge to Rhetorical Historiography

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-188
Author(s):  
Brandon Katzir
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Arabic Language ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Medieval Rhetoric ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Latin Language ◽  
Arabic Rhetoric ◽  
Rhetorical Traditions ◽  
The Middle Ages

This article explores the rhetoric of medieval rabbi and philosopher Saadya Gaon, arguing that Saadya typifies what LuMing Mao calls the “interconnectivity” of rhetorical cultures (Mao 46). Suggesting that Saadya makes use of argumentative techniques from Greek-inspired, rationalist Islamic theologians, I show how his rhetoric challenges dominant works of rhetorical historiography by participating in three interconnected cultures: Greek, Jewish, and Islamic. Taking into account recent scholarship on Jewish rhetoric, I argue that Saadya's amalgamation of Jewish rhetorical genres alongside Greco-Islamic genres demonstrates how Jewish and Islamic rhetoric were closely connected in the Middle Ages. Specifically, the article analyzes the rhetorical significance of Saadya's most famous treatise on Jewish philosophy, The Book of Doctrines and Beliefs, which I argue utilizes Greco-Islamic rhetorical strategies in a polemical defense of rabbinical authority. As a tenth-century writer who worked across multiple rhetorical traditions and genres, Saadya challenges the monocultural, Latin-language histories of medieval rhetoric, demonstrating the importance of investigating Arabic-language and Jewish rhetorics of the Middle Ages.

Josephus: Noble Sicarii Suicide or Mass Slaughter at Mount Masada?

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Peter Allen
Keyword(s):  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Track Record

An attempt is made to ratiocinate historical events at Mount Masada in circa 74 C.E. as related by Josephus Flavius. Cohen (1982, 393) clearly sees Josephus as a mostly dishonest historian, one who happily exaggerates and embellishes his accounts. As a consequence of this rhetorical straitjacket that he places Josephus in, Cohen (for one) cannot accept Josephus’s Masada account as being an “unalloyed version of the truth.” The author analyses Josephus’s track record apropos his recording of other historical events and submits that, rhetorical strategies aside, the historian can largely trust Josephus’s accounts.    

Füchsische Poetologie. Zur Spiegelfiktion im Reynke de Vos (1498)

POETICA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 193-218
Author(s):  
Hannah Rieger
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Ancient Rhetoric ◽  
Wooden Frame ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
Middle Low German ◽  
Specific Material

Abstract The Middle Low German Beast Epic Reynke de Vos (1498) is about two legal proceedings against the fox Reynke, who is charged by the other animals with the tricks he played on them. When he is sentenced to death, Reynke defends himself by delivering speeches that are constructed as described in ancient rhetoric. Part of those speeches is Reynke’s lie about his treasure, which he would give to the lion if he pardoned him. Reynke describes three pieces of jewellery as part of this made-up possession, one of which is a mirror. When Reynke describes it, he also tells Aesopic fables that are carved into its wooden frame. His fictional artefact, especially the interplay of its specific material and the content of the fables told, has a poetological level. In his description, Reynke hybridizes the political discourse of the early modern period, in which the virtue of prudentia becomes more and more important, with the rhetorical competence to deliver speeches and tell fables. In his fiction of the mirror he draws up a poetological draft that combines the role of a rhetor in court with his well-known properties of being clever and cunning. By describing the artefact, Reynke shows how to use rhetorical strategies, especially to tell fables, as an instrument to gain acceptance and to acquire political influence.

Privatpolitik und Aufklärung: Johann Christoph Gottscheds Veröffentlichungsstrategie

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-43
Author(s):  
Nadja Reinhard
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
Academic Education ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Female Authorship ◽  
Education Of Women ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Scientific Integration

Abstract According to Jürgen Habermas, equality amongst those of unequal social standing in 18th-century society was limited to the private sphere. Though Gottsched shows how to use this sphere strategically for private policy and cooperation, he knows how to modify his publication strategies wisely in order to achieve the greatest and best possible effectiveness in his attempt to popularise Enlightenment. By his Moralische Wochenschriften as well as by his more popular way of academic writing for students he spreads controversial ideas such as theoretical and practical reason’s primacy over theologic argumentations, the academic education of women, or female authorship. Yet, he does so prudently and expertly uses the opportunities offered by publishing anonymously or under a pseudonym to support scientific integration of women. Gottsched relied upon a variety of rhetorical strategies to introduce controversial ideas to the broader public without embracing them openly. Employing different strategies of publication, he pursued his agenda as a moral educator, promoted emancipation from religious authorities, and advanced his own brand of cultural nationalism in order to unfold and popularise the German literary tradition. He thus significantly contributed to the structural transformation of the public sphere as described by Heinrich Bosse.

Digitaler Video-Aktivismus: Rhetorische Strategien der Protestmobilisierung im Internet : Digital Video Activism: Rhetorical Strategies of Protest Mobilization on the Internet

SPIEL ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-119
Author(s):  
Kathrin Fahlenbrach
Keyword(s):  
Digital Video ◽  
Central Place ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Public Protest ◽  
Online Videos ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Digital Sphere

The Internet has become a central place for protest communication: the organization of protest actions, the networking of potential activists, the dissemination of information, the calling for participation in protest actions, and the mobilization of support for protest concerns. All these and other practices have migrated from the analog to the digital sphere of publicity on the Internet. Thus the forms and strategies of public protest and activism have also changed and expanded. The article traces the special conditions of protest mobilization on the Internet. Against this background it examines different types of activist online videos with their specific audiovisual rhetorical strategies.

Tongues of Fire

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Farriss
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Culture Contact ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Southern Mexico ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Indigenous Church ◽  
Cultural Gaps

Language and translation governed the creation of Mexican Christianity during the first centuries of colonial rule. Spanish missionaries collaborated with indigenous intellectuals to communicate the gospel in dozens of local languages that had previously lacked grammars, dictionaries, or alphabetic script. The major challenge to translators, more serious than the absence of written aids or the great diversity of languages and their phonetic and syntactical complexity, was the vast cultural difference between the two worlds. The lexical gaps that frustrated the search for equivalence in conveying fundamental Christian doctrines derived from cultural gaps that separated European experiences and concepts from those of the Indians. This study focuses on the Otomangue languages of Oaxaca in southern Mexico, especially Zapotec, and relates their role in the Dominican evangelizing program to the larger frame of culture contact in postconquest Mesoamerica. Fine-grained analysis of translated texts is used to reveal the rhetorical strategies of missionary discourse and combines with an examination of language contact in different social contexts. A major aim is to spotlight the role of the native elites in shaping what emerged as a new form of Christianity. As translators, chief catechists, and parish administrators they made evangelization in many respects an indigenous enterprise and the Mexican church it created an indigenous church.

Reading and Writing History

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Rutledge
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Culture ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
Ab Urbe Condita ◽  
The City ◽  
Classical History

This essay attends to the neglected marginal commentary that John Bellenden composed to accompany his translation of the first five books of Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita (From the Founding of the City). It argues that the approaches of the commentary (Latinate, learned, antiquarian) stand in sharp opposition to the vernacular, courtly project that Bellenden’s translation has generally been understood to be. It suggests that the work may owe rather more than has been realized to Bellenden’s engagement with the intellectual culture of the new university in Aberdeen in the later 1530s and offers an important window onto the variety of ways in which classical history was being read during the reign of James V.

“Godsplaining”: Toward a Theory of Religious Capital in Political Rhetoric

2021 ◽  
pp. 002193472110293
Author(s):  
Wincharles Coker
Keyword(s):  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
Radio Station ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
God's Will ◽  
Biblical Allusion ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Prophetic Authority

This paper is an effort at theorizing the neologism godsplaining. The term interrogates the attempt by religious clerics to earn cultural capital by explaining God’s actions and preferences. The paper does so by deconstructing the political rhetoric of two popular Ghanaian prophets, following the outcome of the 2020 presidential and parliamentary elections. Using deconstruction as an analytical tool, the study analyses a 2-hour interview the clerics granted an Accra-based local radio station on its morning show. The analysis showed that the religious leaders engaged in “godsplaining” by employing five basic rhetorical strategies— appeal to prophetic authority, kategoria versus apologia, erotema, biblical allusion, and anecdote in order to defend why their perceived political party either won or lost the 2020 general elections. The analysis revealed that the deliberative rhetoric of the prophets suggested a biased hermeneutic of God’s will in favor of their preferred political affinity. The study has implications for further research in media studies, religious communication, and the question of divinity in partisan politics.

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