Eugenides and the Art of Rhetoric
Oct. 21st, 2008 08:54 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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queensthiefI was reading Quintilian this afternoon, and this passage about the superiority of figured language (i.e. being clever and saying what you don't mean, but so that people in the know will know what you do mean) struck me:
Isn't this precisely how Gen operates, both with swords and language?
For, just as in fencing it is easy to see, parry, and repel direct blows and simple, straightforward strokes, while sidestrokes and feints are less easy to detect, and the art lies in making a threat which is not related to your real object, so oratory which lacks guile fights only with eight and drive, whereas if you use feints, and vary your approach you can attack the flanks or the rear, draw off the defence, and, as it were, duck to deceive. Nor is there any better way to induce emotions. If face and eyes and hands can do a lot to move men's minds, how much more can the face of the spoken word, as it were, do for use, when it is set to produce the effect we want!
-Instituto Oratoria9.1.20-1, transl. Russell, 2001
Isn't this precisely how Gen operates, both with swords and language?
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Date: 10/22/08 01:44 am (UTC)yep. pretty much nails it.
good catch, and thanks for sharing!
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Date: 10/22/08 01:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 10/22/08 03:37 pm (UTC)I love how we have so many Classics people, too. Yay for non-traditional literary settings!
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Date: 10/22/08 03:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 10/22/08 03:31 am (UTC)Be ready to poke people on the spur of the moment to see which way they jump. You may end up rolling on the ground with your ears ringing, but you'll learn plenty.
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Date: 10/22/08 12:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 10/23/08 02:15 am (UTC)