During the past century, literary education, often divorced from
rhetoric, has grown increasingly distant from the practice of
language in statecraft, law, religion, and ethics. Yet literature
and rhetoric retain open, independent powers to enhance what
Emerson calls "the conduct of life." In these provocative essays,
James Engell argues that a more complete literary training can
foster a heightened sense of shared social experience, an awareness
of diverse views, a love of language, and a more powerful ability
to express the values we enshrine or debate. Revealing a set of
deep intersections among literature, politics, rhetoric, and the
public deliberation of values, he explores how dedicated
individuals of different callings resort to heightened language in
order to secure knowledge, test beliefs, consider policy, and
promote action.
Through profiles of Lincoln, Burke, Swift, Hume, Lowth, Vico,
and others, Engell explores the political and ethical involvement
of writers with their culture in order to reestablish links between
literary qualities of language and the means by which we challenge
power and secure liberty. He presents a cogent argument for a
different, expanded kind of literary education, suggesting that
training in rhetoric, now often misunderstood or neglected, can
serve the common good without becoming mired in partisan squabbles
or academic pedantry.
Despite the dominance of visual media in our society, observes
Engell, the difficult problems we face must be resolved through
language. By presenting writers who use resourceful language to
engage political contests and cultural issues, he contributes to
ongoing debates in education, politics, and culture without
subscribing to easy labels of "left" and "right" or "traditional"
versus "innovative." He demonstrates imaginative ways to apply
time-tested literary techniques to a changing world, making use of
the past yet in a way that the past could not predict. This
passionately argued book calls for a shift in the ways we teach and
regard literature.
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