Rhetorical Figures Research Articles

Cicero’s Political Personae, by Joanna Kenty, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Cicero’s Political Personae is a study of the characters Cicero crafted, embodied, and performed in his postexile speeches. By proxy, it is also a study of oratory from the end of the Roman Republic to the beginning of the Principate, a period of political metamorphosis that author Joanna Kenty notes is more often studied by military historians than by rhetoricians. Kenty’s readings of Cicero’s speeches contextualize the place of orators in this era, and in turn assert orators’ value as negotiators of and with power and as shapers of the Roman political landscape, even during a period of waning republican power (16).Kenty’s project is a rhetorical one insofar as her objects of study are Cicero’s speeches, though her readings intentionally lack a theoretical framework and are not grounded in classical rhetorical theory. There is no mention of a “middle style,” for example, and discussions of rhetorical figures are rare. The absence of theoretical framing may cause rhetoricians to bristle. However, this absence offers an opportunity to read Cicero outside of traditional, often restrictive, classical rhetorical models, models that Cicero himself helped to generate and uphold.Underlying Kenty’s work is the notion that successful speeches are not solely ones by which the rhetor persuades an audience or enacts something tangible. Indeed, Kenty focuses not on the strategies Cicero used to win arguments but rather on the mechanisms by which he engaged in self-fashioning and the purposes served by his invented personae. Many of Cicero’s postexile speeches allude to his shifting place in politics, and the self-fashioning evident in these speeches aims for a delicate diplomatic balance. For example, chapter 2, “The Orator as Friend,” primarily explores Cicero’s persona as friend to Pompey and Caesar. Most intriguing in this chapter is Kenty’s comparison of Cicero’s friend persona in Pro Marcello, in which he praised then-dictator Caesar for allowing the senate to debate Marcellus’s exile, with his persona in parts of the First Philippic, in which he strongly cautioned consuls Antony and Dolabella to take care of the people of Rome—by all accounts, two very different speeches. Throughout Cicero’s Political Personae, Kenty links seemingly unrelated speeches by their shared personae, which allows for a uniquely complex and comprehensive cross-section of Cicero’s later work.Kenty occasionally mentions contemporary politics, though there is ample potential here for reading this text as part of a larger project in classical rhetorical reception. In particular, chapter 6, “The Popular Orator,” which centers on Cicero’s insistence that he was popular despite not being a popularis (i.e., a demagogue), might be read alongside discussions of present-day demagoguery. On a whole, Kenty resists the narrative that oratory declined in the transitional period between the Republic and early Principate by reading Cicero’s postexile speeches both broadly and deeply, and invites us to reconsider the measures by which we determine what is effective oratory.

Lives, Letters, and Quilts: Women and Everyday Rhetorics of Resistance by Vanessa Kraemer Sohan

Reviewed by: Lives, Letters, and Quilts: Women and Everyday Rhetorics of Resistance by Vanessa Kraemer Sohan Sarah Walden Vanessa Kraemer Sohan. Lives, Letters, and Quilts: Women and Everyday Rhetorics of Resistance. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2019 232 pp. ISBN 978-0-8173-2038-6 In Lives, Letters, and Qailts, Vanessa Kraemer Sohan argues for the value of “everyday rhetorics of resistance” or “the conscious, purposeful recontextualization of the seemingly ordinary means and materials available in order to mediate thought and action, and to persuade others” (3). She examines three women or groups of women who demonstrate the power of persistent, everyday acts that recontextualize the means available to them in a particular time, place, and space. Throughout the book Sohan emphasizes two key arguments. First, she argues for the importance of a translingual and transmodal framework in order to avoid oversimplifying language, to understand difference as the norm, to “recover and reclaim the ways individual composers recontextualize within and across languages, genres, modes, and media,” and to adopt “more democratic and descriptive approaches to language” (9). Sohan’s second key argument involves the need to expand what counts as rhetoric, to redefine resistance, and to reframe how scholars situate rhetors who do not necessarily fit within the typical heroic narratives. For example, when Sohan discusses the ministry of Eliza P. Gurney, she describes the legend that one of Gurney’s letters was in President Abraham Lincoln’s breast pocket the night he was assassinated. She writes, in one of the most powerful lines of the book, that this myth serves as “a reminder of how a powerful, feminist rhetorical figure can be pigeonholed and, as a result, remain hidden in plain sight, because her rhetorical practice is evaluated solely in relation to the men with whom she came in contact, rather than on its own merit” (70-71). Sohan’s commitment to feminist rhetorical scholarship is clear throughout the book as she works to articulate and examine the everyday rhetoric available to women and to argue for its value as a site of study. In chapter one, Sohan explores the letter-writing campaigns of the Townsend Movement, a populist movement that advocated pension reform for the elderly by establishing local clubs that could organize and promote the plan through letter-writing campaigns, voter-registration drives, and petitions. These clubs promoted literacy through workshopping letter-writing, which allowed members to “collaboratively imagine” their future without financial worries (41). Pearl Buckhalter, president of the Oregon [End Page 209] City, Oregon, Townsend Club No. 1, is an example of a leader who recontextualized the means available to position herself as an expert, using her own experience as her ethos, rather than simply repeating the words prescribed by Townsend headquarters (52). Sohan argues convincingly that the translingual and transmodal literacy practices of the Townsend Movement allowed individuals like Buckhalter to transform their lives through the literacy training they receive as part of their activism, even if the movement they promote ultimately fails, as the Townsend Movement did. Nevertheless, she argues, this is exactly why rhetorical scholars must fight against the impulse to examine only heroic narratives of activism and must include the everyday in their analyses. In chapter two, Sohan examines the life and work of Quaker minister and activist Eliza P. Gurney. Gurney, Sohan argues, skillfully blends the epideictic form of classical rhetoric with the “nondirective, nonconfrontational, conversational rhetorical approach” of the Quaker community (71-72). Sohan examines several key parts of her ministry: her development as a minister, her traveling ministry in Europe, and her relationship with President Lincoln. Sohan argues that Gurney harnessed silence and kairos to establish an ethos with potentially hostile audiences, at a time when ethos was assumed to be more fixed than fluid. In her discussion of Gurney’s meeting and correspondence with Lincoln, Sohan demonstrates how Gurney recontextualized the epideictic to develop a relationship with the president and to plead with him to imagine a more peaceful and just world. In this chapter, Sohan significantly builds on prior scholarship on Gurney to establish her as a skillful activist and rhetorician through a detailed exploration of Gurney’s speeches, letters, and meetings. Chapter three is perhaps...

Multimodal analysis of advertising discourse during the lockdown due to COVID-19: Comparison of the communication strategies of financial services and automotive products in Spain

The goal of the following text is to analyze the changes in television advertising in the banking and automobile sectors, according to the social context. The hypothesis is that communication is significantly influenced by the situational context, causing differences between the advertising of the two sectors. A multimodal discourse analysis is used, comparing twenty commercials from the banking and automobile sectors in 2019 and 2020, the period during which the lockdown due to COVID-19 took place. Based on a qualitative and quantitative analysis tables were developed with which to analyze general data such as the value proposition or target audience of the advert, or other special data like the text (verb tenses, rhetorical figures…), the image and the sound used. The fact that context is decisive in communication is made evident, and since this is different in every sector, the communication strategy is clearly different as well. However, the points that the two sectors have in common are remarkable: these range from talking about brands and products, to speaking for and about people.

Redefining Rhetorical Figures through Cognitive Ecologies: Repetition and Description in a Canadian Wind Energy Debate

ABSTRACT While current cognitive approaches to rhetorical figures portray them as internalized to the brain, rhetorical figures emerge through embodied experiences within an environment, crystallizing material patterns and bringing elements of a cognitive ecology into relief. In particular, figures of repetition coordinate regularities in the environment, linking repeated items into relational relationships. Figures of description such as enargeia enact sensory education, making salient aspects of the environment perceptible. A situated example involving a controversy over wind turbine installation in Canada shows how rural community members use these figures to coordinate sensory information and persuade others to understand the issue differently.

The persuasive effects of verbal anchoring and visual complexity

Many persuasive messages intermingle images with text. Readers who wish to interpret such messages must grapple with the information in both modalities as well as the relationship between them. One instance of this occurs in modern advertising, which is predominantly visual with verbal text assuming a supporting role. The text functions to anchor the meaning of the image, thereby guiding the reader to the preferred conclusion. However, little is known about how variations in verbal anchoring produce meaning and persuasion. To address this knowledge gap, the present study sketches a model of message processing in which perceived interpretational guidance is the key explanatory mechanism. A repeated measures experiment (N = 304) finds that verbal anchoring (complete vs. moderate vs. none) is positively related to perceived interpretational guidance, regardless of the complexity of an ad’s image (straightforward vs. visual rhetorical figure). Moreover, perceived interpretational guidance explains the effects of verbal anchoring on persuasion. Findings suggest that complete anchoring should be preferred over moderate or no anchoring because people value the cognitive efficiency associated with being guided in their interpretation of the ad’s visual imagery.

Риторические вопросы и восклицания в славянском историческом повествовании рубежа XI–XII вв. («Повесть временных лет», «Чешская хроника», «Хроника Галла Анонима»)

The paper addresses rhetorical questions and exclamations in East and West Slavic historical narration of 11–12 centuries, showing that in the Russian Primary Chronicle rhetorical questions and exclamations were used to strengthen the assessment of the chronicle fragments for new ideology formation of the Ancient Rus’. The combinations of original and borrowed statements in the rhetorical figures indicate the orientation of the Old Russian chroniclers following the Byzantine pattern to the biblical rhetorical tradition. On the contrary, there are practically no quotations in rhetorical questions and exclamations in the West Slavic chronicles. Thus in the Chronica Bohemorum rhetorical figures are often combined with various expressive means and can relate not only to the content, but also to the form of the narrative, including being inside the phrase and being stable expressions. The same features are true for the Gesta Principum Polonorum, in which rhetorical figures are less often correlated with expressive means, and their expressive component is more clearly manifested. The author comes to the conclusion, that actualization of narrative subjectivity by means of rhetorical questions and exclamations is a common feature of the sources under consideration, that allows better understanding the worldview and tasks of medieval history scribers.

Impact of Verbal and Visual Rhetoric in Advertising on Consumers’ Response

Rhetorical figures are linguistic tools that tend to have a great influence on consumers’ response and help in the persuasion process. The deviation caused by rhetorical figures evokes the audiences’ feelings and increases their elaboration and attitude towards the advertisement. Advertisers use verbal and visual rhetorical figures to communicate their messages. The present study analyzes a corpus of 10 advertisements to find out the rhetorical devices used in them. In addition, it tests the impact of verbal versus visual structures to find out which of them is more persuasive and more favorable for consumers. The study conducts a questionnaire to test the impact of using verbal and visual components in the advertisements and to find out which of them is more persuasive and more favorable for the consumers. Results have shown that processing verbal-visual advertisements showed more pleasure and favorable attitude toward the advertisements.

Семиотический аспект имени собственного: об интересе Паисия Лигарида к этимологии имени

The purpose of the article is to explain the way in which the Metropolitan of Gaza Paisius Ligarides interpreted the meaning of the name Aleksei. In the dedication to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, which opens the first part of the book about the ecclesiastical trial of Patriarch Nicon, addressing the Russian ruler, the metropolitan used the metaphors “savior”, “deliverer”, “liberator”, “lover of God” and “lover of Christ” instead of a name. This rhetorical figure, well known in Russian written culture since ancient times, goes back to the Byzantine methods of decorating speech. In an effort to reveal the content of new connotations in the name Aleksei, which arose in the middle of the 17th century in connection with the idea of the liberation mission of Alexei Mikhailovich in the Christian East, actively exploited by the Greeks, Ligarides broke the name into letters, “building up” each to a word. The content of the resulting phrase corresponded to the prophetic moods of our time. This method, outwardly similar to the alphabetic acrostic, was not familiar to Russian baroque culture, which knew many “games” with letters and words. This principle of revealing the hidden meaning of a word did not take root in the Orthodox tradition, where a proper name determined the fate of a person and had a sacred meaning that did not need to be deciphered element by element and understood as a whole, in contrast to the many meanings obtained by manipulating letters and juggling words.

Rhetorical Scheme in Georg Philipp Telemann’s Sonatas for Two Violins or Flutes (1727)

The relevance of this article is due to the lack of research of G.Ph. Telemann’s works in the context of Baroque rhetoric. The main purpose of this article is to reveal the content of the Six Sonatas for two violins or flutes by G.Ph. Telemann in the context of the rhetorical scheme. In contrast to the rhetorical figures, the components of the rhetorical canon in a musical piece are not commonly examined in fundamental theorists’ works, and for this reason we suggested to reveal ways of its realization in the G.Ph. Telemann’s duo sonatas. The results of the study have shown that a turn to the rhetorical scheme during the analysis is a completely historical and logical method. The understanding of the subject of musical rhetoric has changed in the historical space, but a great number of Baroque theorists considered the possibility of defining and turning to a rhetorical canon in music, in analogy with verbal rhetoric. The analysis of G.Ph. Telemann’s duo sonatas allows conclusively conclude that they represent four stages of the rhetorical scheme (except the memoria): inventio – as an introduction to a whole composition or as a subject (theme) of a single movement, as well as performer’s improvisation (before or in-between the movements), dispositio – as a specific plan of the form development; decoratio – the use of rhetorical figures and phrases, as well as compositional and performer’s ornamentation and pronuntiatio – methods of sound production, phrasing, dynamics and articulation. The correspondence between G.Ph. Telemann’s music and the rhetorical concept proves not only his profound theoretical knowledge, but also demonstrates the practical use of the rhetorical scheme in his works, which substantiates this analytical approach in this research and also takes researchers and performers to a deeper level of comprehension of the poetics in G.Ph. Telemann’s works.

Efectele muzicii asupra psihicului uman

Music is a complex phenomenon that has accompanied humanity since its inception by adopting multiple forms. The compositional act itself can be defined, in a broad sense, as the processing of a certain musical content springing from the infinite cognitive processing of the individual. In the trials of history on humanity, music receives spiritual valences, becoming an auditory vehicle with strong healing meanings. The first references to the role that music played during an epidemic throughout history can be found during the Renaissance when Europe, especially Italy, was devastated by the plague. The composers inserted in the madrigals and motets of the time different rhetorical figures with reference to the landmark events of the period. What was the purpose of these insertions in the musical material? How can music help us through its own means and methods to cooperate with the negative effects that a global pandemic brings to the sphere of human consciousness?

“Нам балюча, а значыць – мы ёсць”: пратэстная лірыка Насты Кудасавай (2020–2021 гг.)

The purpose of this article is to analyze the role of poetry and poets within the ongoing Belarusian 2020 revolutionary protests through the prominent example of Nasta Kudasava’s protest poems written between August 2020 and April 2021. In order to carry out the aforementioned analysis, we contextualize the concept of protest poetry within literary history in general and Belarusian language history in particular and also examine several extracts from Kudasava’s poetry (both pre- and post -2020) from a technical, lyrical, and problematical point of view. Our findings concerning the poet’s images, rhetorical figures, and formal patterns of choice, as well as the changes that her treatment of social and political issues has undergone over the latest years, have revealed the evolution of new tendencies within her works (specifically, of socially engaged poetry which was not significantly present in her texts before). This fact confirms our hypotheses that socio-political changes directly affect the development of literature and poetry in particular, while poets take on the role of society’s spokespeople through their art.

Dialogues for the blind and those who can see, or Philosophy in the boudoir

The article analyzes the artistic features of Diderot and Sade’s philosophical dialogues, which allow authors to convey innovative ideas to readers, to turn a serious treatise into a fascinating theatrical show. These works (Diderot’s D’Alembert’s Dream (1769, publ. 1830–1831) and Conversation of a philosopher with the Maréchale de *** (1774, publ. 1775); Marquis de Sade’s Dialogue between a priest and a dying man (1782) and Philosophy in the Boudoir (1785)) are united not only by a dialogical form, but also by the original use of such rhetorical figures as fantasy and evidence, thanks to which abstract philosophical and scientific ideas appear directly before the reader’s eyes. Briefly dwelling on the importance and specificity of these techniques in antiquity, the author of the article examines their manifestations in the studied texts, referring to the history of their creation, structure, chronotype, heroes, mise-en-scène. All dialogues take place in a private setting, which allows the libertine heroes to express without fear their views, communicating them to their listeners in an intelligible language. In all dialogues, fictionality is combined with factuality, but if Diderot represents real characters in fictional situations, the Sade’s fictional characters quote well-known philosophical and anthropological works. The research makes it possible to better understand specificity and popularity of the genre of dialogue in the French Enlightenment literature.

Functional dimension of inverted models in English-Ukrainian co-referential pairs as the idiostyle element

The article elucidates inverted models’ functional dimension in the English-Ukrainian co-referential pairs of the G. Greene’s belles-lettres text. Graham Greene is known to be one of the famous English writers of the twentieth century. Irony, sarcasm and ludicrous attitude towards people and environment, with defiance to traditional concepts and values. In elucidating the selected material, a set of linguistic methods and approaches have been applied aiming at defining isomorphic and allomorphic factors of the inverted models’ functioning in the contrasted languages. The inversion frequency in text and distributional capacity of this category in English and Ukrainian constitute the key divergent features. The definition of a co-referential pair notion, and the significance of the immanent and transcendental research approach as well the relevance of the inverted discourse fragments analysis has been stated. The multilevel of the inverted contexts stylistic potential consideration contributes to its preservation in the target text. In the English text stylistic inversion is used to: 1) to emphasize the stressed semantically and conceptually significant units; 2) characterizing and assessing of personages with special attention to the units of temporal and locative semantics; 3) adverbial units shifting to the “unusual” sentence position to achieve the discourse fragment expressiveness; 4) artistic detail actualization; 5) use of inversion as an element of the other rhetoric figure (metonymy, in particular) for the artistic imagery development.

Возникновение перечня фигур Майнрада Шписса в музыкально- научном контексте эпохи

The object of study in this article is the circle of scientific ideas in German musicology in the 1730s —1740s, which influenced the music theorist and composer from southern Germany, the Benedictine monk Meinrad Spiess, who included in the Tractatus musicus compositorio-practicus (Augsburg, 1745) a catalog of musical rhetorical figures. In the article, the author relies on the methodology of musical-historical musicology, draws on letters from Spiess and musical-theoretical treatises of the 18th century (especially on articles from the edition «Music Library» (Musikalische Bibliothek), which was initiated by the Society for Musical Sciences (Sozietät der Musicalischen Wissenschaften), headed by Lorenz Christoph Mizler). The study was carried out with the involvement of the works of M. Spiess, L. K. Mizler, F. X. Murschhauser, J. A. Scheibe, J. J. Fux and others. As a result, it was concluded that Spiess understood his autodidactic textbook on composition, taking into account the concept of a comprehensive system of musical knowledge, in which one of the components was an analogy between music and rhetoric. The novelty of this article lies in the contextual consideration of the catalog of figures by M. Spiess.

Epidemic press conferences in Serbia: Between the structural and semantic

The subject of the paper is the identification and analysis of meaningful constructions, which had some characteristics of the rhetorical figures, on the so-called epidemic press conferences in Serbia. The theoretical part starts from the sociological approach to the mass media, which is based on the interaction between the media and the context in which they are situated, which follows the consideration of the relationship between structure and meaning. Epidemic conferences were recognized as a media phenomenon that could serve to shed some light on this relationship, because on the one hand they represented a certain emanation of the political subsystem, while on the other hand their content had a strong symbolic character that included figures. The methodological part is dedicated to the definition of figures and the time framing of the analysis. The results of the analysis showed the presence of several figures that differed in their character and users, and whose common characteristic was that they significantly varied from the health and informational function of conferences. In a broader sense, the aim is to show the way in which certain cultural phenomena, such as the mass media, can generate different sets of meanings, which are the product of certain structural characteristics of society itself.

From Communicative Minimum to Intertextuality and Symbolism: Peter Svetina’s Children’s Literature

From Communicative Minimum to Intertextuality and Symbolism: Peter Svetina’s Children’s Literature Igor Saksida (bio) Peter Svetina’s children’s literature begins with easily understandable, sometimes explicit patterns of communication: his first two animal fairy tales, The Walrus Who Didn’t Want to Cut His Nails (O mrožku, ki si ni hotel striči nohtov; 1999) and The Little Walrus Gets Glasses (Mrožek dobi očala; 2003), deal with the issue of difference and acceptance, establishing a sort of inter-textual dialogue, with older texts focusing on similar problem-oriented topics. After his first forays into children’s literature, Svetina’s poetry and stories developed along two distinct paths: toward language play on the one hand, and toward realistic topics on the other. However, both developments reflect the author’s distinctive poetics of combining nonsense and realism, including problem-focused fiction. Click for larger view View full resolution Click for larger view View full resolution Svetina’s collections of poetry are extremely varied and represent one of the high points of contemporary Slovenian poetry. Svetina’s first book of verse, By-World (Mimosvet; 2001), could be labeled as a collection of problem poetry, although growing up is not shown against a background of symbolic concepts, typical of children’s and young adult poetry at the time; instead, the poems show the reality as childlike and playful. Svetina’s return to the flashes from the uncomplicated (but not naive or idealized) children’s world is one of the foremost characteristics of his poetics of the “communicative minimum,” which transcends the tradition of the complex linguistic innovation of late modernist poetry. On the other hand, language play is the basis of the brilliant Poems from the Washing Machine (Pesmi iz pralnega stroja; 2006), wherein Svetina combines nonsense with taboo words and a lyrical attitude toward nature; many of the texts in the book are also visual poems, meaning that the collection provides the youngest readers with a glimpse of the possibilities of poetic expression without ever being pushy about it. Even in Svetina’s mixed-genre collection of poems and short stories, The Lumber Room (Ropotarna; 2012), nonsense can be [End Page 47] sensed as the common creative basis. As the award justification by the jury for the 2013 Večernica Award explained, “The Lumber Room is an organised chaos of tiny treasures, patiently waiting for the reader to pick them up and blow the dust off them. The writer’s skilful navigation between poetry and prose, between the conscious and the subconscious, is merely playful fluctuation, full of rhetorical figures that with a particular dynamics take the reader from the real to the irrational, from the mighty to the nonsensical…. A ramble through Svetina’s Lumber Room leads to a more creative read, full of elusive twists and turns” (Haramija 85). Svetina’s Homework (Domače naloge; 2014), another collection of poetry, moves away from the poetics of language play; although one can still detect wordplay typical of nonsense poetry (e.g., play with letters, unusual neologisms), the poems are predominantly based on the real world of the modern child, who is not just playful and appreciative of the wonders of nature, but also sometimes lonely: For Grandma to Come for us to school,for kitty to wait for uson our doorstep. For someone to be homewhen we come from school,for us not to be alone, I ask you, our Father,I ask you, mom. (“Homework on Prayer”) and aware of impermanence: On a white fielda crow pecksforgotten autumn’sbreadcrumbs. From afar, it lookslike a breadcrumbitself. Will it be peckedas well? (“Homework on Crows”) Click for larger view View full resolution A similar topic is at the center of Prayers from the Steps (Molitvice s stopnic; 2016), a book based on a rarely touched-upon theme of children’s poetry, a child’s reflections on God. The collection also deals with gratitude but also fear, aging, and intergenerational dialogue. As such, the collection could easily slip into moralization or idealization; however, Svetina avoids both pitfalls. His reflections are not pre-abstract and allow young readers a chance to...

A PROPOSAL ON RHETORIC ANALYSIS OF THE CANOPY THAT DEFINES URBAN SPACE

Aim: The research aims to propose an analysis framework that enables the rhetorical reading of the covers with different functions in urban spaces. Method: In the method of the research, four rhetorical canons from Cicero were transformed into an analysis (reading) framework. In the doctrine of invention, the current change of the canopy is interpreted as an "urban condition" and overlaps with the state of the language. In the arrangement canon, 4 cover classifications were made in accordance with urban situations. The style canon examines the formation of the structure and the referential thought it is based on through metaphor, metonym, hyperbola, parabola. In the memory canon, the characteristics of the chosen style figure, such as the ability to explain the idea of form and fiction, convey its concept, and be evocative and memorable, are examined. Results: Four spatial structures (Metropol Parasol, Fuji Kindergarten, Jay Pritzker Pavilion and Dels Encants District Market) are selected for the canopy classes determined in the study. In the next stage, these selected samples are analyzed according to the rhetorical analysis method created. The findings show that the striking shapes of today's magnificent canopies are based on quite extensive rhetorical figures. Conclusion: Analysis has demonstrated that underlying the complexity of the forms is the technological development and digitalization of construction systems and design thinking that references many main sources such as history, memory, and nature.

Margaret Fuller, Faithful Female Sceptic: The Politics of (Not) Publishing the 1842 "A Credo"

Margaret Fuller, Faithful Female Sceptic:The Politics of (Not) Publishing the 1842 "A Credo" Caitlin Smith (bio) In 1842, Margaret Fuller sent William Channing a text nine years in the making: her personal formulation of belief, "A Credo."1 Building on Fuller's investigation of biblical authority during her 1833–34 Groton retreat, as well as her 1840–41 intensive reading period in Romantic religion, "A Credo" articulates Fuller's own religious beliefs. Fuller explains how she arrived at the "I believe" statements that structure "A Credo." She defines what she is not (a Christian, an irreligious infidel), and embraces an idiomatic definition of religion shaped by Romantic idealism. "A Credo" concludes by staking out a new religious identity for its author. Margaret Fuller would henceforth be a "faithful skeptic."2 But Fuller never publicized either her rejection of institutional Christianity, her self-created Romantic religion (which anticipates the cosmology of American spiritualism), or her new identity as a "faithful sceptic."3 Religious skepticism had been a blurrily defined but much-invoked bugbear in early American political rhetoric since the 1780s.4 Public concern over religious skepticism only increased in the 1810s–40s. Early nineteenth-century print culture documents a consistent anxiety about a vast amount of ambient infidelity. If not properly managed by religious [End Page 383] authorities, this imagined reservoir of doubt could erode shared religious values, thereby destroying the sociable bonds of trust between individual citizens and between citizens and institutions.5 In fact, religious institutions were undergoing significant reorganization in this period, as America's religious marketplace diversified and radically pluralized.6 And political distrust was on the rise, thanks to growing polarization over the morality of the South's "peculiar institution," visible tensions between state and federal orders of governance, and anxiety about economic volatility following the Panics of 1819–21 and 1837. For polemically minded ministers and partisan politicians alike, ambient infidelity provided a powerful rhetorical figure to focus and direct national anxieties. Discussions about skepticism and faith, unbelief and belief, went beyond baldly opportunistic attacks on imagined skepticism. They appeared in published journal debates between opponents termed Christians and Skeptics; theological treatises on the future of specific Christian traditions; new explorations of comparative religion; arguments between moderate, enlightened Deists and reform-minded atheists; and didactic fiction that staged dramatic conversions or deconversions to articulate what true religion meant.7 Transcendentalism emerged from and through these intellectual debates about religion and its future in American life. Though notoriously diverse in terms of philosophy and activism, American Transcendentalism was largely held together by an attempt to reconstitute essential religious sensibilities outside the calcified forms of outmoded creedal Christianity.8 Many of Fuller's male Transcendentalist peers argued that faith and skepticism (or belief and unbelief) were incorrectly construed as opposites and actually worked together to keep religion dynamic and alive. These arguments furnished ammunition to their critics, who (in)famously identified Transcendentalism as "the latest form of infidelity."9 Though Transcendentalist [End Page 384] thinkers disagreed considerably about what was meant by faith and by skepticism, and about the specifics of the merging process, they advanced structurally similar arguments about the nonoppositional nature of faith and skepticism. Given her male Transcendentalist peers' open advocacy of a faith-doubt synthesis, Fuller's decision to keep private her solution to the conflict is telling. "A Credo" embraces elements of the same German Romantic tradition that Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker found attractive. Emerson saw skepticism as a temporary obstruction of both individual and universal-historical growth, and argued that overcoming doubt through action could help young men develop courage, valor, and conviction. Fuller's statement elevated obstructive skepticism to half of a mutually constitutive, dialectical dualism. And "A Credo" was not incidental to Fuller's developing thought. As she embraced and redefined gendered antiskepticism, she invented the figure of dynamic polar dualism that would later structure her idea of gender in Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Finally, "A Credo" creates a feminine solution to obstructive skepticism. Fuller advocates an inward turn and mystical awakening over the heroic leap into world action advised by Goethe, Carlyle, and Emerson.10 Though Fuller's private writings record a consistent...

Tropes and Rhetorical Figures in Simultaneous Interpreting of Presidential Speeches

Since one of the distinctive features of presidential speeches is the use of tropes and rhetorical figures, which are employed to achieve a persuasive effect, this study aimed to find out if tropes and rhetorical figures are retained in simultaneous interpretation from English into Lithuanian and whether the omission of them in the interpretation diminishes the rhetorical effect of the speech. The research found that out of 500 tropes and rhetorical figures observed in original speeches more than a half are absent in interpretation. Based on a closer analysis of examples, it was concluded that tropes and rhetorical figures tend to cause problems for interpreters and that the omission of tropes and rhetorical figures results in a diminished rhetorical effect in the target language.

Reflection of Christian ideological orientation through liturgical symbolism in P. Tchaikovsky's opera music

This article examines the opera music by P.I. Tchaikovsky from the point of view of its Christian orientation as a leading trend in the development of the national opera style of the 19th century and the manifestation of liturgical symbolism in it at different levels of the musical and dramatic whole. Most of the opera compositions of the composer are investigated in the context of the manifestation of iconic elements of Christian culture in them, which is common to Western and Eastern European, with a later branching into two main branches: Catholicism and Orthodoxy. The main liturgical symbols in the drama and musical fabric of opera compositions are highlighted, their gradual increase in each subsequent opera composition by P. Tchaikovsky is noted, in connection with the composer's search for spiritual truths and his appeal to certain subjects, which became the basis for the libretto of opera compositions. The greatest attention is paid to the composer's late operas: “The Maid of Orleans” and “Iolanta”, as compositions with the most pronounced symbolism of the Christian cultural tradition. The question of the manifestation of liturgical symbolism at different levels is revealed: from the general dominant idea of the composition, which can be defined as the main line of drama, its deep focus, to more particular ones, through certain dramatic, stylistic, musical techniques and verbal texts, to musical and intonational formulas, intonation stable complexes, which over time received the status of a symbol, a certain sign of a complex expression of the liturgical musical and intonational, verbal and semantic field, became rhetorical figurations, such as “Rest with the Saints” in the Orthodox tradition and “Dies irea” in the Catholic