Vico and the Transformation of Rhetoric in Early Modern Europe [Hardcover]

This book examines the entirety of Giambattista Vico's oeuvre and demonstrates his significance as a theorist who adapted the discipline of rhetoric to modern conditions.Considered the most original thinker in the Italian philosophical tradition, Giambattista Vico has been the object of much scholarly attention but little consensus. In this new interpretation, David L. Marshall examines the entirety of Vicos oeuvre and situates him in the political context of early modern Naples. He demonstrates Vicos significance as a theorist who adapted the discipline of rhetoric to modern conditions.Considered the most original thinker in the Italian philosophical tradition, Giambattista Vico has been the object of much scholarly attention but little consensus. In this new interpretation, David L. Marshall examines the entirety of Vicos oeuvre and situates him in the political context of early modern Naples. He demonstrates Vicos significance as a theorist who adapted the discipline of rhetoric to modern conditions.Considered the most original thinker in the Italian philosophical tradition, Giambattista Vico has been the object of much scholarly attention but little consensus. In this new interpretation, David L. Marshall examines the entirety of Vicos oeuvre and situates him in the political context of early modern Naples. He demonstrates Vicos significance as a theorist who adapted the discipline of rhetoric to modern conditions. Marshall presents Vicos work as an effort to resolve a contradiction. As a professor of rhetoric at the University of Naples, Vico had a deep investment in the explanatory power of classical rhetorical thought, especially that of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. Yet as a historian of the failure of Naples as a self-determining political community, he had no illusions about the possibility or worth of democratic and republican systems of government in the post-classical world. As Marshall demonstrates, by jettisoning the assumption that rhetorlc,