Makes accessible to modern readers the 17th-century rhetorics of Thomas Hobbes (15881677) and Bernard Lamy (16401715)

Hobbes "A Briefe of the Art "of "Rhetorique, "the first English translation of Aristotle s rhetoric, reflects Hobbes sense of rhetoric as a central instrument of self-defense in an increasingly fractious Commonwealth. In its approach to rhetoric, which Hobbes defines as that Faculty by which wee understand what will serve our turne, concerning any subject, to winne beliefe in the hearer, the "Briefe "looks forward to Hobbes great political works "De Cive "and...