Prologemena to an Future Rhetoric of Shadows, Shades and Silhouettes
Utah State University From the SelectedWorks of Gene Washington January 2014 PROLOGEMENA TO AN FUTURE RHETORIC OF SHADOWS, SHADES AND SILHOUETTES Contact Start Your Own Notify Me Author SelectedWorks of New Work Available at: http://works.bepress.com/gene_washington/157 PROLEGOMENA TO ANY FUTURE RHETORIC OF SHADOWS, SHADES AND SILHOUETTES Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow , and never continueth in one stay. In the mid of life we are in death (1662 Anglican Church "Burial of the Dead"). *** But mark, madam, we live amongst riddles and mysteries—the most obvious things, which come in our way, have dark sides, which the quickest sight cannot penetrate into; and even the clearest and most exalted understandings amongst us find ourselves puzzled and at a loss in almost every cranny of nature's works. Laurence Sterne (1713-68) Stepping out of the shadows…I…. Rhetoric, as a subject of investigation, is perhaps older than the invention of writing. One piece of evidence for this is its root in the Indo-European word, aera , "to say (something) with a specific intention" (Greek ρ in direct descent to the modern 1 age; please see Buck, entry under "speak, say,"). Another kind of evidence is the abundance of treatises on rhetoric, Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, Burke, Booth and Ong to mention some of the most prominent. Despite their differences in method, all these authors would perhaps agree that the key ingredient of rhetoric is author/speaker intentionality— the power of minds to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties and states of affairs plus non-existent things.
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