Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Notes on the text
- Introduction
- PART I CLASSICAL ELOQUENCE IN RENAISSANCE ENGLAND
- 1 THE STUDY OF RHETORIC
- 2 THE POLITICS OF ELOQUENCE
- 3 THE MEANS OF PERSUASION
- 4 THE TECHNIQUES OF REDESCRIPTION
- 5 THE USES OF IMAGERY
- PART II HOBBES AND THE IDEA OF A CIVIL SCIENCE
- Conclusion: Why did Hobbes change his mind?
- Bibliographies
- Index
5 - THE USES OF IMAGERY
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Notes on the text
- Introduction
- PART I CLASSICAL ELOQUENCE IN RENAISSANCE ENGLAND
- 1 THE STUDY OF RHETORIC
- 2 THE POLITICS OF ELOQUENCE
- 3 THE MEANS OF PERSUASION
- 4 THE TECHNIQUES OF REDESCRIPTION
- 5 THE USES OF IMAGERY
- PART II HOBBES AND THE IDEA OF A CIVIL SCIENCE
- Conclusion: Why did Hobbes change his mind?
- Bibliographies
- Index
Summary
The central question raised by the classical rhetoricians is how to speak and write in a ‘winning’ style. As we have seen, part of their answer is that we need to master the various techniques of redescription that serve to amplify our utterances. But their main answer is that we need to learn how to make effective use of the figures and tropes of speech. As Cicero puts it in his De partitione oratoria, ‘we must learn to employ words with the power to illuminate what is being described’, which in turn requires ‘that they must be weighty, full, resonant’, and ‘above all used in a metaphorical way’. Quintilian develops the argument at greater length in books vIII and Ix of the Institutio oratoria. To achieve victory in the war of words, we must learn ‘to increase or diminish at will what we want to say, to excite or subdue, to speak joyfully or severely, copiously or concisely, sharply or gently, magnificently or subtly, gravely or wittily’. The best way to generate these various forms of amplification ‘is by the right kind of metaphorical usages, as well as by the figures of speech, the right reflections, and finally the right type of arrangement’. The closing chapter of book vIII examines the specific contribution made by the tropi to producing these effects, at which point Quintilian stresses that ‘many of the tropes are used simply to increase and add ornatus to our utterances’.
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- Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes , pp. 181 - 212Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996