Rhetoric and Politics. Gracian and the New World Order

Ed. Nicholas Spadaccini and Jenaro Talens
The work of the Spanish Jesuit Baltasar Gracián (whose Art of Wordly Wisdom has enjoyed considerable success in Europe and, recently, in the U.S.) becomes the starting point for a discussion on the political uses of rhetoric, from early modern times to the present.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Practice of Worldly Wisdom: Rereading Gracián and The New World Order
Nicholas Spadaccini and Jenaro Talens

Part I. The Politics of Modernity

Chapter 1

At the Threshold of Modernity: Gracián’s El Criticón
Alban K. Forcione

Chapter 2

On Power, Image, and Gracián’s Prototype
Isabel C. Livosky

Part II. Subjectivities

Chapter 3

Saving Appearances: Language and Commodification in Baltasar Gracián
Malcolm K. Read

Chapter 4

Surviving in the Field of Vision: The Building of a Subject in Gracián’s El Criticón
Luis F. Avilés

Chapter 5

Gracián and the Emergence of the Modern Subject
William Egginton

Chapter 6

Gracián and the Ciphers of the World
Jorge Checa

Part III. Representations

Chapter 7

Gracián and the Art of Public Representation
David Castillo

Chapter 8

Symbolic Wealth and Theatricality in Gracián
Francisco J. Sánchez

Chapter 9

Gracián and the Scopic Regimes of Modernity
Oscar Pereira

Chapter 10

Gracián and the Authority of Taste
Anthony J. Cascardi

Part IV. The Politics of Everyday Life

Chapter 11

The Art of Worldly Wisdom as an Ethics of Conversation
Carlos Hernández-Sacristán

Chapter 12

Gracián in the Death Cell
Michael Nerlich

Afterword

Constructing Gracián
Edward H. Friedman