John D. Lyons

A Comparison of Four Electroshocking Procedures for Assessing the Abundance of Smallmouth Bass in Wisconsin Streams

Examples, crucial links between discourse and society's view of reality, have until now been largely neglected in literary criticism. In the first book-length study of the rhetoric of example, John Lyons situates this figure by comparing it with more frequently studied tropes such as metaphor and synecdoche, discusses meanings of the terms example and exemplum, and proposes a set of descriptive concepts for the study of example in early modern literature. Tracing its paradoxical nature back to Aristotle's Rhetoric, Lyons shows how exemplary rhetoric is caught between often competing aims of persuasive general statement and accurate representation. In French and Italian texts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries this dual task was rendered still more challenging by a transition to new sources of examples as the age of discovery brought increased emphasis on observation. The writers of this period were aware of a crisis in exemplary rhetoric, a situation in which serious questions were raised about how authors and audience would find a common ground in interpreting representative instances. Lyons's focus on the strategy of example leads to new readings of six major writers--Machiavelli, Marguerite de Navarre, Montaigne, Pascal, Descartes, and Marie de Lafayette. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Rhetoric of Example in Early Modern France and Italy

Exemplum

Kathleen Wine

Placing the conflict between chance and order at the center of early modern French culture, these essays cluster around four problems: Providence in Question, Aesthetics and Poetics of Chance, Law and Ethics of Chance, and Chance and its Remedies. By demonstrating the breadth and intensity of the early modern questioning of chance, they offer an illuminating new perspective on French culture in the period.

Chance, Literature, and Culture in Early Modern France

A concise and lively introduction to the world of French literature.-publisher description.

French Literature: A Very Short Introduction

A fresh and comprehensive account of the literature of France, from medieval romances to twenty-first-century experimental poetry and novels.

The Cambridge Companion to French Literature

Mary B. McKinley

Provocative and wide-ranging, appealing to specialists in numerous fields, Critical Tales is the first collective volume of studies in English on the Heptameron.

John D. Lyons

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