Rhetoric and Politics: Baltasar Gracián 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

  1. At the Threshold of Modernity: Gracián’s El Criticón

    Alban K. Forcione

  2. On Power, Image, and Gracián’s Prototype

    Isabel C. Livosky

    Part II. Subjectivities

  3. Saving Appearances: Language and Commodification in Baltasar Gracián

    Malcolm K. Read

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

    Luis F. Avilés

  5. Gracián and the Emergence of the Modern Subject

    William Egginton

  6. Gracián and the Ciphers of the World

    Jorge Checa

    Part III. Representations

  7. Gracián and the Art of Public Representation

    David Castillo

  8. Symbolic Wealth and Theatricality in Gracián

    Francisco J. Sánchez

  9. Gracián and the Scopic Regimes of Modernity

    Oscar Pereira

  10. Gracián and the Authority of Taste

    Anthony J. Cascardi

    Part IV. The Politics of Everyday Life

  11. The Art of Worldly Wisdom as an Ethics of Conversation

    Carlos Hernández-Sacristán

  12. Gracián in the Death Cell

Michael Nerlich

Afterword: Constructing Gracián 

Edward H. Friedman