In Culture, Genre, and Literary Vocation, Michael Davitt Bell charts the important and often overlooked connection between literary culture and authors' careers. Bell's influential essays on nineteenth-century American writers—originally written for such landmark projects as The Columbia Literary History of the United States and The Cambridge History of American Literature—are gathered here with a major new essay on Richard Wright. Throughout, Bell revisits issues of genre with an eye toward the unexpected details of authors' lives, and invites us (...) to reconsider the hidden functions that terms such as "romanticism" and "realism" served for authors and their critics. Whether tracing the demands of the market or the expectations of readers, Bell examines the intimate relationship between literary production and culture; each essay closely links the milieu in which American writers worked with the trajectory of their storied careers. (shrink)

The Epistle of the Eloquent Clarification concerning the Refutation of Ibn Qutayba by Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān b. Muḥammad. Edited by Avraham Hakim. Islamic History and Civilization, vol. 90. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Pp. xi + 22 + 175. $129, €94.

Cinema is commonly hailed as "the universal language," but how does it communicate so effortlessly across cultural and linguistic borders? Drawing on a lifetime's worth of viewing an reviewing, influential critic Gilberto Perez invokes a dizzying array of masters past and present includin Chaplin, Ford, Kiarostami, Eisenstein, Malick, Mizoguchi, Haneke, Hitchcock, and Godard--to explore the transaction between filmmaker and audience. The Eloquent Screen shows how cinema, as the consummate contemporary art form, establishes a thoroughly modern rhetoric in which different points (...) of view are brought into clear focus.". (shrink)

In Descartes's philosophy, communicating scientific and philosophical truth does not represent a problem that can be traced back to humanistic “rhetoric”, meant as “the art of persuasion”. Descartes states his belief in the “eloquence” of reason: a clear, precise, and adequately expressed thought cannot fail to “convince” the listener. This is the measure of the distance between the level of truth and the level of opinion. However, the moment of confrontation with the public is also the very moment when (...) the truth of the new knowledge enters into conflict with other, different conceptions. Education and history influence communication with the result that the distinction between intellectual “conviction” and “persuasion” becomes less straightforward. Rational eloquence, as Descartes is well aware, must be articulated in such a way as to avoid any possible language equivocation and to adopt exposition strategies ensuring effective access to readers. The aim of this paper is to illustrate some aspects of this tension as expressed by the writer Descartes with reference to a number of texts (from the Regulae to the Meditationes) that were essential for the elaboration and dissemination of his philosophy. (shrink)

This comparative study searches out intersections in the thought of Giambattista Vico and Michael Polanyi by situating their thought in relation to the history of ideas generally and to the rhetorical tradition specifically. The overarching concern of the essay is the relation between knowing and making truth -- or, in rhetorical terms, between wisdom and eloquence.

The controversy over Greek pronunciation at Cambridge University in 1542, principally between university chancellor Stephen Gardiner and regius professor of Greek John Cheke, marked the emergence of not only the linguistic but also the political agenda of the mid-Tudor Cambridge humanists. This important group included future statesmen and political thinkers such as William Cecil, later Elizabeth's famous minister, Thomas Smith, author of De republica anglorum, and John Ponet, leading exponent of ‘resistance theory’. In the 1542 Greek controversy Cheke and his (...) allies advocated the restoration of an ancient pronunciation they saw as having been the medium of eloquence in the Athenian republic. Their concepts of language provide a template for their political concepts: both language and political structures are generated by the community, reflective of the community's particular character, susceptible to change and capable of improvement. Throughout their subsequent careers and especially in the reign of Edward VI, when their influence was at its height, these humanists fostered a ‘monarchical republican’ politics; it involved rhetorical persuasion as the main mode of political action, programmes of religious and economic reform, and popular consent as an important factor in the good governance of the commonwealth. (shrink)

This article is an introduction to an ancient Egyptian text called The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant and an argument that it ought to be seen as a classic of political philosophy. After contextualizing the tale as part of a tradition of moral and political philosophy in ancient Egypt, I explore the methods by which the text defines the proper roles of political authority and contrast its approach to justifying political authority with the argument from the state of nature so (...) common in modern Western political philosophy. I claim that the tale's argument from dysfunction anticipates the move in contemporary Western political philosophy towards privileging non-ideal over ideal theory. I discuss challenges in translating the key term in the tale – ma'at – in light of the fact that it can be taken to mean ‘justice’ and/or ‘truth’. Finally, I discuss how the irony at the heart of its narrative can lead us to interpret the tale as having either conservative or revolutionary implications for the political system it depicts. (shrink)

My own life -- Selections from Hume's letters concerning virtue, religion and matters literary -- Selections from Hume's letters on history, politics, law, commerce and Scottish affairs -- Hume's last letter : to Adam Smith -- Selections from An enquiry concerning the principles of morals -- Extracts from Of the liberty of the press.

This article argues that Kant’s attack on the ars oratoria in §53 of the Critique of the Power of Judgement is directed against eighteenth-century school rhetoric, in particular against the ‘art of speech’ (Redekunst) of Johann Christoph Gottsched. It is pointed out that Kant suggests a revision of Gottsched’s conception of ‘true eloquence’, which was the predominant rhetorical ideal at the time. On this basis, and in response to recent discussions on ‘Kantian rhetoric’, Kant’s own ideal of speech is (...) adressed. It emerges that he favours a culture of speech embedded in moral cultivation, which excludes any disciplinary form of rhetoric. (shrink)

_A many-faceted exploration of spoken eloquence: how it works, how it has evolved, and how to tap its remarkable power_ We all know eloquence when we hear it. But what exactly is it? And how might we gain more of it for ourselves? This entertaining and, yes, eloquent book illuminates the power of language from a linguistic point of view and provides fascinating insights into the way we use words. David Crystal, a world-renowned expert on the history (...) and usage of the English language, probes the intricate workings of eloquence. His lively analysis encompasses everyday situations as well as the oratory of great public gatherings. Crystal focuses on the here and now of eloquent speaking—from pitch, pace, and prosody to jokes, appropriateness, and how to wield a microphone. He explains what is going on moment by moment and examines each facet of eloquence. He also investigates topics such as the way current technologies help or hinder our verbal powers, the psychological effects of verbal excellence, and why certain places or peoples are thought to be more eloquent than others. In the core analysis of the book, Crystal offers an extended and close dissection of Barack Obama’s electrifying “Yes we can” speech of 2008, in which the president demonstrated full mastery of virtually every element of eloquence—from the simple use of parallelism and an awareness of what _not_ to say, to his brilliant conclusion constructed around two powerful words: _dreams_ and _answers_. (shrink)

This paper is as much about a particular depiction of the tribune P. Sulpicius Rufus as it is about Cicero's De Oratore, a dialogue regularly called upon by historians to give evidence on the 90s b.c. and the characters who take part in the conversation it depicts. My main focus is literary: I will argue that, given what we know about the historical Sulpicius, Cicero's choice of Sulpicius for a prominent minor role in De Oratore drives the tragic historical framework (...) that undercuts the optimism expressed within the dialogue by the main protagonist L. Licinius Crassus for the civic value of oratory. The Rhetorica ad Herennium illustrates a certain type of allegory with the statement ‘as if one should call Drusus a “faded reflection of the Gracchi”’. In De Oratore, Drusus’ friend and successor Sulpicius functions as a reflection of the Gracchi and his eloquence reinforces the problem posed by such orators as the notoriously eloquent Gaius Gracchus for any such grand claims about the civic value of oratory. By examining Cicero's use of relatively recent history, we therefore discover that De Oratore is significantly more pessimistic than it may at first seem. This pessimism, however, has important implications for historians, since expanding our understanding of De Oratore as a literary construct should encourage historians to be significantly more cautious about using the text as a historical source. As Görler points out with regard to Crassus’ swansong at De or. 3.4–5, although ‘a naive reader of Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta could be left with the impression that some sentences are quite well attested’, most of the fragments of Crassus’ speech can actually be traced back to De Oratore. Likewise, a significant proportion of the standard elements in Sulpicius’ backstory go back to De Oratore and become a great deal less convincing once we accept De Oratore as a sustained fictional account featuring people who were neither as politically ‘safe’ nor as intellectually united as Cicero would have them be. My secondary focus in this paper is therefore on the broader lessons to be drawn from Sulpicius’ role in De Oratore. I will begin by outlining the historical context of the dialogue, which was written in the mid 50s but is set in 91, a few weeks before the natural death of Crassus, one of its two protagonists. Next, I will discuss the dialogue's literary context, specifically the Platonic allusions Cicero embeds within the text. These allusions encourage us to treat De Oratore’s historical framework carefully, if not sceptically, and I will outline the ‘off notes’ struck by references to the Gracchi and by the presentation of Crassus and Antonius before examining the problem Sulpicius poses for a straightforwardly optimistic reading of De Oratore. I will conclude by considering first the literary implications for De Oratore of accepting that Sulpicius is a deliberately problematic character and then the historical implications of taking a sceptical approach towards De Oratore as an historical source for our picture of Sulpicius. (shrink)

The theories I have outlined suggest that by displacing but not excluding theory, art historical practice at once grounds itself in empiricism and implies an acceptance of theory’s claim that it cannot be so grounded. But beyond descriptions like this, the theories are not a helpful way to understand practice because they cannot account for its persistence except by pointing to its transgressions and entanglements in self-contradiction. Nor does it help to say, pace Steven Knapp, Walter Benn Michaels, and Stanley (...) Fish, that strong theory can have no consequences, because the reason theory has no consequences in this instance is not the impossibility of theory’s transcendence , but a combination of the conventions, desires, and beliefs of practicing historians.14 Theoretical approaches must bypass the concerns of practice because practice has no position which can be argued alongside theory’s positions. There are two reasons why a “Defense of Empiricism in Art History” has not been written. First, art historical practice does not incorporate even a local or heuristic theory to explain or discuss itself. Second, its “position” is not a latent theory, waiting to be eloquently stated, but something which is presupposed in a vague and variable manner by the art historical texts themselves. Art historical practice, for example, has an objectivist intention: it takes itself to be “a science, with definite principles and techniques,” which can exclude theory and generate texts by appealing only to previous nontheoretical texts and to the facts.15 This intention is rarely stated, exasperatingly slippery to formulate clearly, and even incoherent when it is applied to existing texts; but this is so precisely because it works by not being included in the texts. If some version of it were stated at the outset of a monograph, it would cast doubt on the entire enterprise and lead the reader to conclude incorrectly that practice is dependent on theory, and uncertain theory at that. In its unstated form, the objectivist intention allows narrative practice to continue unimpeded. James Elkins is a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago. This article is from a work in progress concerned with the influence of writing conventions on the history of art. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Fate of Eloquence in the Age of HumeVicki J. SappThe Fate of Eloquence in the Age of Hume, by Adam Potkay; xii & 253 pp. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994, $36.95.With the memory still fresh of Jerome Christensen’s Practicing Enlightenment, I experienced no small anxiety on reading Adam Potkay’s first acknowledgment, to Prof. Christensen and his “provocative seminar” on Hume. I finished a third of (...) The Fate of Eloquence in the Age of Hume before the overt nod, when Potkay spotlights the essayist Hume’s appeal to a female readership: “Within this doux commerce, the figures of classical eloquence are entirely too priapic—too ‘swelling... monstrous and gigantic’—to be admitted” (p. 75). However, Hume’s self-castration wound is mercifully left unprobed, and the priapus doesn’t come up again until Potkay’s own prosopopoeia, “ancient eloquence’s priapic energy” (p. 158). Although he follows Christensen’s equation of polite letters with effeminacy, Potkay treats gender more materially than metaphorically. Although attending to his poststructuralist debts with such observations as “Hume, the unmoved mover, observes the spiritual implosion of one whose passions cannot, like his own, be alleviated through voyeurism” (p. 125), Potkay ultimately fulfills his promise to draw his insights from “a history of eighteenth-century reading and reception” (p. 22). In a clear prose he conveys his focused argument, about “the fate of eloquence” in the modern [End Page 244] reconfiguration of society, through a variety of illustrations; as a result, the book has broad appeal to readers interested in literary contexts of rhetoric, gender, and culture.Situating Hume as the center of shared interest and assumption, Potkay defines an “Age of Hume,” a constellation of writers responding to and producing a tension between an ideal of classical eloquence and modern codes of politeness. Boldly establishing this tension “as the characteristic theme of the era,” Potkay makes a compelling case for politeness as the primary means of class stratification for emergent capitalist society. (Paul Fussell has also applied an eighteenth-century literary mind to contemporary sociology in his Class: A Guide Through the American Status System.) In his epilogue, Potkay brings his thesis home, to the ironies of academic publishing elitism and the “peculiarly American commitment to civic equality.”Several ruling assumptions guide Potkay’s treatment of the eloquence/politeness dualism. Reading high-canon writers and moral philosophers, Potkay defines eighteenth-century Britain as an age “that does not want its passions inflamed” and suspects eloquence of aiming to seduce the masses with rhetorical figures and physical gesture. Equated with popular government, eloquence threatens to manipulate “our untutored responses”—passions unmediated by moral and social education—within an exclusively “masculine” political economy. Echoing Christensen, Potkay finds “a characteristic irony” of the new “sentimental commerce” in the “polite restraint of the sexual passions that covertly fuel it” (p. 147). Writers must adapt to the paradigm shift of a new commercial and literary economy which included a sentimental ideal of woman as social sovereign—a model of polite literacy and civility which Hume described in his initial piece, “Of Essay Writing.”Potkay diffuses his gender-based thesis over a broad political and philosophical perspective. Politeness redressed the conflict between masculine populism (Bolingbroke) and effeminate luxury (Walpole) and “served to compensate for virtue lost through commercial progress” (p. 194). Potkay points out the ultimately political association of eloquence with vulgarity: savages, children, and the insane speak a language “thought to abound in figures”—a convenient habit in those whom a ruling class would exclude from “mature, rational discourse” (p. 68). (Here, Potkay elides the more complex “woman” from the above marginalia, for immediate reasons of either obviousness or neatness.)On the philosophical front Hume variously affirmed and problematized a “topos of eloquence as error.” Treatise-lovers may regret that he simmered this passionately figurative text down into the duller and drier Enquiries in order to fulfill a polite—and commercial—demand for the replacement of oral with written culture, of emotional gesticulation with “rationality, abstraction, logic” (p. 63). Potkay’s arguments suggest a ruling irony in this paradigm-shift: the association of eloquence (masculine) with emotionalism and politeness (feminine) with rationality and... (shrink)

In a 1988 conference, American and British scholars unexpectedly discovered that their ideas were converging in ways that formed a new picture of the variegated Hellenistic mosaic. That picture emerges in these essays and eloquently displays the breadth of modern interest in the Hellenistic Age. A distrust of all ideologies has altered old views of ancient political structures, and feminism has also changed earlier assessments. The current emphasis on multiculturalism has consciously deemphasized the Western, Greco-Roman tradition, and Nubians, Bactrians, and (...) other subject peoples of the time are receiving attention in their own right, not just as recipients of Greco-Roman culture. History, like Herakleitos' river, never stands still. These essays share a collective sense of discovery and a sparking of new ideas—they are a welcome beginning to the reexploration of a fascinatingly complex age. (shrink)

In a 1988 conference, American and British scholars unexpectedly discovered that their ideas were converging in ways that formed a new picture of the variegated Hellenistic mosaic. That picture emerges in these essays and eloquently displays the breadth of modern interest in the Hellenistic Age. A distrust of all ideologies has altered old views of ancient political structures, and feminism has also changed earlier assessments. The current emphasis on multiculturalism has consciously deemphasized the Western, Greco-Roman tradition, and Nubians, Bactrians, and (...) other subject peoples of the time are receiving attention in their own right, not just as recipients of Greco-Roman culture. History, like Herakleitos' river, never stands still. These essays share a collective sense of discovery and a sparking of new ideas—they are a welcome beginning to the reexploration of a fascinatingly complex age. (shrink)

“[Niebuhr] is one of my favorite philosophers. I take away [from his works] the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away... the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard.”—President Barack Obama Forged during the tumultuous but triumphant postwar years when America (...) came of age as a world power, The Irony of American History is more relevant now than ever before. Cited by politicians as diverse as Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Niebuhr’s masterpiece on the incongruity between personal ideals and political reality is both an indictment of American moral complacency and a warning against the arrogance of virtue. Impassioned, eloquent, and deeply perceptive, Niebuhr’s wisdom will cause readers to rethink their assumptions about right and wrong, war and peace. “The supreme American theologian of the twentieth century.”—Arthur Schlesinger Jr., New York Times “Niebuhr is important for the left today precisely because he warned about America’s tendency—including the left’s tendency—to do bad things in the name of idealism. His thought offers a much better understanding of where the Bush administration went wrong in Iraq.”—Kevin Mattson, The Good Society “Irony provides the master key to understanding the myths and delusions that underpin American statecraft.... The most important book ever written on US foreign policy.”—Andrew J. Bacevich, from the Introduction. (shrink)

A compelling look at the problem of evil in modern thought, from the Inquisition to global terrorism Evil threatens human reason, for it challenges our hope that the world makes sense. For eighteenth-century Europeans, the Lisbon earthquake was manifest evil. Today we view evil as a matter of human cruelty, and Auschwitz as its extreme incarnation. Examining our understanding of evil from the Inquisition to contemporary terrorism, Susan Neiman explores who we have become in the three centuries that separate us (...) from the early Enlightenment. In the process, she rewrites the history of modern thought and points philosophy back to the questions that originally animated it. Whether expressed in theological or secular terms, evil poses a problem about the world's intelligibility. It confronts philosophy with fundamental questions: Can there be meaning in a world where innocents suffer? Can belief in divine power or human progress survive a cataloging of evil? Is evil profound or banal? Neiman argues that these questions impelled modern philosophy. Traditional philosophers from Leibniz to Hegel sought to defend the Creator of a world containing evil. Inevitably, their efforts—combined with those of more literary figures like Pope, Voltaire, and the Marquis de Sade—eroded belief in God's benevolence, power, and relevance, until Nietzsche claimed He had been murdered. They also yielded the distinction between natural and moral evil that we now take for granted. Neiman turns to consider philosophy's response to the Holocaust as a final moral evil, concluding that two basic stances run through modern thought. One, from Rousseau to Arendt, insists that morality demands we make evil intelligible. The other, from Voltaire to Adorno, insists that morality demands that we don't. Beautifully written and thoroughly engaging, this book tells the history of modern philosophy as an attempt to come to terms with evil. It reintroduces philosophy to anyone interested in questions of life and death, good and evil, suffering and sense. Featuring a substantial new afterword by Neiman that raises provocative questions about Hannah Arendt's take on Adolf Eichmann and the rationale behind the Hiroshima bombing, this Princeton Classics edition introduces a new generation of readers to this eloquent and thought-provoking meditation on good and evil, life and death, and suffering and sense. (shrink)

We are continually trying to make sense of our world through the stories we tell and are told, but in our search for coherence, we often sacrifice our freedom and the rich randomness of life. In this passionate and lucid book, Michael André Bernstein challenges our practice of "foreshadowing," in which we see our lives as moving toward a predetermined goal or as controlled by fate. Foreshadowing, he argues, demeans the variety and openness that exist in even the most ordinary (...) moments of life. And it is precisely ordinary life, with its random, haphazard, and contradictory choices, that Bernstein celebrates in his call for "sideshadowing"—an alternative practice that reminds us that every present is dense with possible futures. Bernstein sees the Holocaust as the prime example of how our tendency to "foreshadow" and "backshadow" misrepresents history. He argues eloquently against politicians and theologians who posit the Holocaust as foreordained and who depict its victims as somehow complicit with a fate that they should have been able to foresee. Instead, Bernstein proposes a radically new understanding of the relationship between the Holocaust and earlier Jewish experience, transforming how we read and write both individual and communal history. Foregone Conclusions is an extraordinarily wide-ranging book, both in its scope and in its broader intellectual and moral implications. From the latest biographies of Kafka to the peace accords between Israel and the PLO, from the role of cultural diversity in universities to the Crown Heights riots, Bernstein warns us against passively accepting our identities as being shaped primarily by historical or personal victimization. His book liberates us from stereotyped patterns of understanding the relationship between our lives as individuals and as members of racial, sexual, and historic/ethnic communities. Berstein ultimately opens a powerful new way to understand the principles governing how we read and write narratives--whether historical, personal, or literary. In striking original juxtapositions and critical evaluations of Marcel Proust, Robert Musil, and Aharon Appelfeld, Bernstein sugests the need for a new literary model based on the prosaics of daily life. Bernstein speaks directly and persuasively to many of the most pressing issues in Jewish history, Holocaust studies, literary criticism, and cultural history. Foregone Conclusions is a provocative and poignant attempt to find coherence in our world without accepting either ineluctable destiny of pure coincidence. (shrink)

The first of Erich Neumann's works to be translated into English, this eloquent book draws on a full range of world mythology to show that individual consciousness undergoes the same archetypal stages of development as has human consciousness as a whole. Neumann, one of Jung's most creative students and a renowned practitioner of analytical psychology in his own right, shows how the stages begin and end with the symbol of the Uroboros, or tail-eating serpent. The intermediate stages are projected in (...) the universal myths of the World Creation, Great Mother, Separation of the World Parents, Birth of the Hero, Slaying of the Dragon, Rescue of the Captive, and Transformation and Deification of the Hero. Throughout the sequence the Hero is the evolving ego consciousness. (shrink)

This third volume of _Order and History_ completes Voegelin's study of Greek culture from its earliest pre- Hellenic origins to its full maturity with the dominance of Athens. As the title suggests, _Plato and Aristotle_ is principally devoted to the work of the two great thinkers who represent the high point of philosophic inquiry among the Greeks. Through an absorbing analysis of the Platonic and Aristotelian vision of soul, polis, and cosmos, Voegelin demonstrates how the symbolic framework of the older (...) myth was superseded by the more precisely differentiated symbols of philosophy. Although this outmoding and rejection of past symbols of truth might seem to lead to a chaotic and despairing relativism, Voegelin makes it the basis of a profound conception of the historical process: "the attempts to find the symbolic forms that will adequately express the meaning [of a society], while imperfect, do not form a senseless series of failures. For the great societies have created a sequence of orders, intelligibly connected with one another as advances toward, or recessions from, an adequate symbolization of the truth concerning the order of being of which the order of society is a part." In this view, history has no obvious "meaning," yet each society makes a similar venture after truth. Although every society works out its destiny under different conditions, each nonetheless creates symbols"in its deeds and institutions"which bear the meaning of its own existence. History, then, acquires a unity in the common endeavor toward meaning and order. The rationality and nobility of this view of history has much to say to the present age. Dante Germino's powerful introduction to this edition of _Plato and Aristotle_ eloquently directs the reader into Voegelin's search through the thought of Plato foremost and Aristotle secondarily and toward a full understanding of their relevance to the "modern" world. This masterpiece, Germino argues, provides a welcome antidote to the spirit of an era Voegelin once called the Gnostic age. (shrink)

Arthur C. Danto is unique among philosophers for the breadth of his philosophical mind, his eloquent writing style, and the generous spirit embodied in all his work. Any collection of essays on his philosophy has to engage him on all these levels, because this is how he has always engaged the world, as a philosopher and person. In this volume, renowned philosophers and art historians revisit Danto's theories of art, action, and history, and the depth of his innovation as (...) a philosopher of culture. Essays explore the importance of Danto's philosophy and criticism for the contemporary art world, along with his theories of perception, action, historical knowledge, and, most importantly for Danto himself, the conceptual connections among these topics. Danto himself continues the conversation by adding his own commentary to each essay, extending the debate with characteristic insight, graciousness, and wit. Contributors include Frank Ankersmit, Hans Belting, Stanley Cavell, Donald Davidson, Lydia Goehr, Gregg Horowitz, Philip Kitcher, Daniel Immerwahr, Daniel Herwitz, and Michael Kelly, testifying to the far-reaching effects of Danto's thought. Danto brought to philosophy the artist's unfettered imagination, and his ideas about postmodern culture are virtual road maps of the present art world. This volume pays tribute to both Danto's brilliant capacity to move between philosophy and contemporary culture and his pathbreaking achievements in philosophy, art history, and art criticism. (shrink)

This volume covers a relatively short span of time, rather less than the first three-quarters of the first century BC; but it was an age of profoundly important developments, with enduring consequences for the subsequent history of Latin literature. Original and innovative in widely differing ways as was the work of Lucretius, Sallust and Caesar in particular, the scene is dominated, historically, by two figures: Cicero and Catullus. Cicero was a politician and a man of affairs as well as (...) a man of latters, whose vast literary output reflects a range of intellectual interests unparalleled among surviving Roman writers; creator of a prose style the Quintilian regarded as synonymous with eloquence itself; and better known to us, from his letters, as a human being, than any other figure from classical antiquity. Catullus was a poet, single-mindedly devoted to fostering the tradition of learned Alexandrian poetry at Rome; the author of one slender volume of verse that has attracted more critical attention in proportion to its size than any other ancient poetry-book; and the lover of Lesbia. In these chapters it is shown how these, and other, Roman writers of genius continued the process of transforming their traditional Greek models into new and vigorous Latin forms, with lasting effects for oratory, historiography, and the higher genres of poetry. (shrink)

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's original essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" transformed the analysis of colonialism through an eloquent and uncompromising argument that affirmed the contemporary relevance of Marxism while using deconstructionist methods to explore the international division of labor and capitalism's "worlding" of the world. Spivak's essay hones in on the historical and ideological factors that obstruct the possibility of being heard for those who inhabit the periphery. It is a probing interrogation of what it means to have political subjectivity, to (...) be able to access the state, and to suffer the burden of difference in a capitalist system that promises equality yet withholds it at every turn. Since its publication, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" has been cited, invoked, imitated, and critiqued. In these phenomenal essays, eight scholars take stock of the effects and response to Spivak's work. They begin by contextualizing the piece within the development of subaltern and postcolonial studies and the quest for human rights. Then, through the lens of Spivak's essay, they rethink historical problems of subalternity, voicing, and death. A final section situates "Can the Subaltern Speak?" within contemporary issues, particularly new international divisions of labor and the politics of silence among indigenous women of Guatemala and Mexico. In an afterword, Spivak herself considers her essay's past interpretations and future incarnations and the questions and histories that remain secreted in the original and revised versions of "Can the Subaltern Speak?"—both of which are reprinted in this book. (shrink)