Abstract

Rousseau's argumentative skills immediately emerge in the opening pages of "La Nouvelle Heloise" and remain the dominant artistic technique throughout his epistolary work of fiction. This book systematically delineates the features of Rousseau's persuasiveness and elaborates on the actual communicative devices to which so many critics have both alluded and remained indifferent. The critical approach consists of a comparative method based on textual analysis to prove the unmistakable presence of classical modelsóinventio (arguments), disposito (arrangement), and elocutio (style)óand to underscore how they form the spinal chord of the celebrated romance. Arico accentuates for the first time Rousseau's oratorical originality as an artist and the polemic outlook on life that influenced his formalistic approachóone aimed at persuading characters, as well as members of a reading public, to behave, live, and, in fact, think in a particular manner. Contents: Foreword; Acknowledgments; Introduction; PART ONE: INVENTION; Arguments; Morality; Emotions; PART TWO: STRUCTURAL PATTERNS; Exordium; Statement of Fact; Confirmation; Peroration; PART THREE: ELOQUENCE; Simple Eloquence; Sublime Eloquence; Middle Eloquence; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.