The Stylus and the Scalpel : : Theory and Practice of Metaphors in Seneca’s Prose / / Tommaso Gazzarri.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Ebook Package English 2020
• VerfasserIn: Gazzarri, Tommaso,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2020]; ©2020
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Series: Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes , 91
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (XVII, 266 p.)

Seneca’s developed metaphors draw on what is known to describe the unknown. They put hard ethical in highly accessible, and often quite entertaining, terms. The present book provides a functional description of Seneca’s dialectical relation between metaphorical language and philosophy. It shows how Stoic philosophy finds a new means of expression in Seneca’s highly elaborated rhetorical discourse, and how this relates to the social and cultural demands of Neronian culture. Metaphors are purposely utilized to work "collectively" rather than by category or type and that, therefore, the analysis of what metaphors do when Seneca chooses to combine them in clusters, demonstrates the existence of a "metanarrative of rhetoric". This approach is fundamentally innovative and has the advantage of gauging the functioning of Senecan style as a whole, rather than focusing on single features of its rhetorical functioning. The main target is to show how philosophical preaching materially contributes to the healing of human soul because it shapes the individual’s cognitive faculty in a way that is physical and not simply figurative. The stylus and the scalpel blend in their functions. This kind of therapy is not just the simulacrum of a more "real" one, it is in itself medical in nature.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Preface -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Note on Translations -- Introduction -- Part I: Theory: Seneca’s Rhetorical Strategies Between Stoic Tradition and Modern Linguistics -- 1 Metasemes and the Classical Tradition -- 2 Modern Theories on Metaphor and the Stoic System -- 3 Metaphors, Emotions, and Moral Progress -- Part II: Practice: The Text and The Body -- 4 From Metaphor to Metaphors -- 5 Metaphorical Physiology -- 6 A Breathing Body -- Epilogue -- Bibliography -- Index Rerum -- Index Locorum