Conversation: A History of a Declining ArtYale University Press, 01/01/2006 - 336 páginas Essayist Stephen Miller pursues a lifelong interest in conversation by taking an historical and philosophical view of the subject. He chronicles the art of conversation in Western civilization from its beginnings in ancient Greece to its apex in eighteenth-century Britain to its current endangered state in America. As Harry G. Frankfurt brought wide attention to the art of bullshit in his recent bestselling On Bullshit, so Miller now brings the art of conversation into the light, revealing why good conversation matters and why it is in decline. Miller explores the conversation about conversation among such great writers as Cicero, Montaigne, Swift, Defoe, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and Virginia Woolf. He focuses on the world of British coffeehouses and clubs in "The Age of Conversation” and examines how this era ended. Turning his attention to the United States, the author traces a prolonged decline in the theory and practice of conversation from Benjamin Franklin through Hemingway to Dick Cheney. He cites our technology (iPods, cell phones, and video games) and our insistence on unguarded forthrightness as well as our fear of being judgmental as powerful forces that are likely to diminish the art of conversation. |
Índice
From the Book of | 29 |
EighteenthCentury Britain | 79 |
A Conversational Triumph Lady | 119 |
Raillery to Reverie | 150 |
From Benjamin | 194 |
From | 242 |
NINE The Ways We Dont Converse Now | 264 |
TEN The End of Conversation? | 291 |
Palavras e frases frequentes
According Addison admired American anger angry argues art of conversation art of pleasing attacked become book of Job Boswell Britain called century civil clubs Coffee coffeehouses Confidence-Man conversationalist conversible world counterculture culture dinner party discussion disliked Easy Rider eighteenth eighteenth-century writers Eminem England English enjoyed ersatz conversible essay Esther Johnson Franklin friends fuck Gatsby Gray guests Hester Thrale Hume says humor implies Instant Messaging intellectual interest Jerry Springer Show Johnson says Lady Mary Lady Mary's learned listen literary live London Mailer mainly manners mind natural never Oakeshott one's opinion passions person pleasing in conversation poem Pope popular praised raillery rap music rappers Rousseau salon Samuel Johnson sation social society Socrates solitude Sparta speaks Spectator sublime Swift T. S. Eliot talk radio talk show television thing Thoreau thought tion Trollope versation wants Wilkes women Woolf word writers on conversation wrote
Referências a este livro
Life on Air: A History of Radio Four: A History of Radio Four David Hendy Pré-visualização indisponível - 2007 |