Unruly Examples: On the Rhetoric of Exemplarity

Front Cover
Stanford University Press, 1995 - Literary Criticism - 376 pages
This collection of twelve essays aims to demonstrate that while example has a rich genealogy in the rhetorical tradition, it also involves issues that are central to current theories of meaning and ethics in literature and philosophy. Whatever is designated as example functions as a nexus of converging articulations: What is it an example of? To whom is the example directed? What makes it 'exemplary', that is, what elevates the singular instance to authoritative status? Is the example merely one - a singular, an accident - or the One, a paradigm or paragon? In this volume, the dimensions of these and other questions for literary theory and philosophy are explored in texts ranging across the Western tradition, from the Bible onwards.

From inside the book

Contents

Midrash as Literary Theory
27
An Example
104
Fables of Responsibility
121
The Pragmatics of Exemplary Narrative
142
The Example
162
Kafka and Benjamin
175
Exemplarity and the Origins of Legislation
211
Kants Examples
255
Kants Symbols
277
Of the Eye and the Law
303
Notes
327
Index
373
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Bibliographic information