Rhetoric: Readings in French Literature

This volume sets out its principles comprehensively and lucidly, providing an outline of key terms and a wide range of illustrative examples. It explores rhetoric at work in different genres, and is a guide to the application of rhetoric to French texts from the 16th century to the present.

Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, whether spoken or written. In the first chapter of Rhetoric: Readings in French Literature, Michael Hawcroft sets out its principles comprehensively and lucidly, providing an easily-consulted outline of key terms and a wide range of illustrative examples. Subsequent chapters explore rhetoric at work in different genres, via close reading of texts which range from the drama of Molière, Racine, and Beckett; Montaigne, Sévigné, and Gide on the self; the prose fiction of Laclos, Zola, and Sarraute; poetry by D''Aubigné, Baudelaire, and Césaire; and the oratory of de Gaulle and Yourcenar. Rhetorical analysis uncovers subtleties and complexities in texts which emerge as exciting dramas of communication. This is at once a handbook of rhetoric and a guide to its application to French texts from the sixteenth century to the present.