The Rhetoric of Sincerity (Cultural Memory in the Present) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080476302X ISBN 13: 9780804763028

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2008

Synopsis

In times of intercultural tensions and conflicts, sincerity matters. Traditionally, sincerity concerns a performance of authenticity and truth, a performance that in intercultural situations is easily misunderstood. Sincerity plays a major role in law, the arts―literature, but especially the visual and performing arts―and religion. Sincerity enters the English language in the sixteenth century, when theatre emerged as the dominant idiom of secular representation, during a time of major religious changes. The present historical moment has much in common with that era; with its religious and cultural conflicts and major transformations in representational idioms and media. The Rhetoric of Sincerity is concerned with the ways in which the performance of sincerity is culturally specific and is enacted in different media and disciplines. The book focuses on the theatricality of sincerity, its bodily, linguistic, and social performances, and the success or failure of such performances.

About this title

About the Author

Ernst van Alphen is Professor of Literary Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Mieke Bal is Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Professor. She is based at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam. Carel Smith is Associate Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the Meijers Research Institute in Law, both at Leiden University, The Netherlands.

Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080476302X
• ISBN 13: 9780804763028
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352
• Editor: Van Alphen Ernst, Bal Mieke, Smith Carel