دانلود کتاب The Purpose of Rhetoric in Late Antiquity: From Performance to Exegesis

Rhetoric has commonly been used as an umbrella term. A quick glance at any bibliographical catalogue in the field of Humanities will suffice to note that ‘rhetoricʼ is a mercurial term that can be applied to issues relating to subjects as varied as philosophy, literature, architecture, theology, gender studies, poetics, and cinematography, to name but a few. Rhetoric has overcome all kinds of prejudices that have portrayed it as the quintessence of garrulousness and futility. In this context, the purpose of this volume is to claim the indisputable centrality of rhetoric in the religious and culturalmilieu of Late Antiquity. The twelve papers of the present work deal with
the role and impact of rhetoric in the fields of Theology, Literature and Politics in Late Antiquity (more specifically, in the fourth century AD). In recent decades, Late Antiquity has been approached from many perspectives, and it has been agreed that the impact of rhetoric on its cultural development
was crucial. Thus, the working assumption of this volume is that rhetoric was a key element behind every single aspect of importance in this transcendental period: rhetoric was the bedrock upon which the composition
of orations, speeches and sermons was built at a time when opportunities for public speaking were numerous in the religious and political arenas; rhetoric was also at the heart of Christian theology, as it provided it
with a logical means of interpreting the Scriptures and with literary forms to divulge; rhetoric was, of course, at the inception of many literary works that had an extraordinary impact on the culture of Late Antiquity.