
The Age of Subtlety
Nature and Rhetorical Conceits in Early Modern Europe
Javier Patino Loira(Author)
University of Delaware Press
Published on 14. June 2024
Book
Hardback
326 pages
978-1-64453-345-1 (ISBN)
Description
A craze for intricate metaphors, referred to as conceits, permeated all forms of communication in seventeenth-century Italy and Spain, reshaping reality in highly creative ways. The Age of Subtlety: Nature and Rhetorical Conceits in Early Modern Europe situates itself at the crossroads of rhetoric, poetics, and the history of science, analyzing technical writings on conceits by such scholars as Baltasar GraciAn, Matteo Peregrini, and Emanuele Tesauro against the background of debates on telescopic and microscopic vision, the generation of living beings, and the boundaries between the natural and the artificial. It contends that in order to understand conceits, we must locate them within the early modern culture of ingenuity that was also responsible for the engineer's machines, the juggler's sleight of hand, the wiles of the statesman, and the discovery of truths about nature.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Laminated cover
Illustrations
3 color and 12 B-W images
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
467 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-64453-345-1 (9781644533451)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
JAVIER PATINO LOIRA is assistant professor of Spanish at UCLA. He is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on early modern Italian and Spanish rhetorical and poetic theory and the formation of libraries, as well as ideas on education and translation.
Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Early Modern Culture of Ingenuity
Part I Comets
1 Poetry's Comets: On Novelty and Artifice
2 Gossip Made of Glass: On Artifice and Deceit
Part II Fireflies
3 At Small Scale: Multiplicity, Variety, and Play
4 The Life of Conceits: Juggling, Magic, and Alchemy
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index