Hyperboles (Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature): The Rhetoric of Excess in Baroque Literature and Thought: 52 - Softcover

Johnson, Christopher D.

 
9780674053335: Hyperboles (Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature): The Rhetoric of Excess in Baroque Literature and Thought: 52
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0674053338 ISBN 13: 9780674053335
Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2010

Synopsis

This book offers a detailed, comparatist defense of hyperbole in the Baroque period. Focusing on Spanish and Mexican lyric ("Gongora", "Quevedo", and "Sor Juana"), English drama ("King Lear" and translations of "Seneca"), and French philosophy ("Descartes" and "Pascal"), Christopher Johnson reads Baroque hyperbole as a sophisticated, often sublime, frequently satiric means of making sense of worlds and selves in crisis and transformation. Grounding his readings of hyperbole in the history of rhetoric and literary imitation, Johnson traces how rhetorical excess acquires specific cultural, political, aesthetic, and epistemological value. Hyperboles also engages more recent critiques of hyperbolic thought (Wittgenstein, Derrida, and Cavell), as it argues that hyperbole is the primary engine of a poetics and metaphysics of immanence.

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About the Author

Christopher D. Johnson is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University.

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Publisher
Harvard University Press
Publication date
2010
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0674053338
ISBN 13 
9780674053335
Binding
Paperback
Number of pages
500

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780674053311: Hyperboles (Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature): The Rhetoric of Excess in Baroque Literature and Thought

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ISBN 10:  0674053311 ISBN 13:  9780674053311
Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2010
Hardcover