The Stylus and the Scalpel - Theory and Practice of Metaphors in Seneca’s Prose

Bibliographic Data

ID23212538
AuthorsTommaso Gazzarri (corresponding author)
Year2020
Publication date2020-09-21
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueStylus and the Scalpel (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherDe Gruyter (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/9783110673715
OpenAlexW3084113306
ISBN9783110673715
LanguageEN
Citations received3

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.

Art · Computer vision · Linguistics · Literature · Stylus · Visual arts · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Computer Science · Organic Chemistry Synthesis Methods · Philosophy

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