Rhetoric of Numbers in Gibbon's History (eBook)

F. P. Lock (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2012
236 Seiten
University of Delaware Press (Verlag)
978-1-61149-417-4 (ISBN)

Infos

History is one of the great master-narratives in the Western tradition. This book examines the ways in which Gibbon uses numbers: not only as historical evidence, for informational purposes, but to persuade (and sometimes to amuse), through the creation of a narrative voice that is at once authoritative and personal.

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Gibbon aspired to combine the critical analysis of the eighteenth-century philosophe with the older traditions of the humanist and scholarly historian. His different uses of numbers, to inform and to persuade, illustrate his remarkable fusion of these approaches. This book, the first to be devoted to a historian's use of numbers, shows how carefully Gibbon interrogated and deployed the numerical evidence in his sources to create a more accurate historical narrative; to demonstrate his own reliability and candor as a historian; and to convince readers of the validity of his interpretations of characters and events.

Autor

F.P. Lock is Professor of English at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 28.9.2012
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Geschichtstheorie / Historik
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
• Schlagworte: Literary Studies • theory
• ISBN-10: 1-61149-417-6 / 1611494176
• ISBN-13: 978-1-61149-417-4 / 9781611494174