This course examines theories of rhetoric as a primary source of
cultural production.  It features Giambattista Vico on eloquence,
tropes, and the poetic wisdom of culture, Friedrich Nietzsche on
rhetoric, metaphor, and the will to power, Chaim Perelman on the
realm of rhetoric and the problem of justice, and Kenneth Burke on
rhetoric, identification, and the drama of human relations.



Units of Instruction:



I.                    Vico’s Lectures on Rhetoric, Metaphor, and
Language

Main Text:  Gimbattista Vico, The Art of Rhetoric (Institutiones
Oratoriae, 1711-1741)

II.                 Vico on Ingenium and Poetic Wisdom in the Course
of Nations

Main Text:  Giambattista Vico, New Science

III.               Nietzsche on Rhetoric and the Tropology of Truth

Main Text:  Friedrich Nietzsche on Rhetoric and Language

IV.              Nietzsche on Metaphor and the Will to Power

Main Text:  Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

V.                 Perelman on Rhetoric and Practical Reason

Main Text:  Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New
Rhetoric:  A Treatise on Argumentation

VI.              Perelman on Argument and the Problem of Justice

Main Text:  Chaim Perelman, The Idea of Justice and the Problem of
Argument

VII.            Burke on Metaphor, Perspective, and Motive

Main Text:  Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change:  An Anatomy of
Purpose

VIII.         Burke on Rhetoric, Identification, and Human Relations

Main Text:    Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives