08/07/2024@16:16:00
The very first line of Aristotle’s Rhetoric runs thus: “ἡ ῥητορική ἐστιν ἀντίστροφος τῇ διαλεκτικῇ” (1). The quite wise ancient Greeks weened that every law-abiding democratic free citizen should be a dialectician and grasp the subtleties of that antistrophe, rhetoric, to shun being fooled by politicians, who are wont to stare at public opinion so as to learn from it which kind of enthymeme is the most persuasive in the agora (2). Public opinion has four faces, videlicet: orientation, degree, causality, and expectation. According to this, there must be four sorts of rhetoricians, and each one must’ve a specific class of audience. Such a couple gives rise to the question concerning the syllogisms, styles, moods, and proofs that an orator may handle to be a cajoling tongue. And, in our age, an age in which telecommunications are the main outlets of politicians, it’s unavoidable to deem the traits of the media they’ve at hand.
The following topics constitute the structure of the digital reputation of a public figure, and are either solid props to ameliorate or sustain it or accursed arms to destroy it. The young technocratic masses of our age feel they do not have some place in our modern economical and political structure, and that they are foredoomed to material poverty and invisibility, and by reason of this they eagerly applaud social media personages who appear before them relishing lyrical pleasures, e.g., a costly goblet of wine, a pied dash, a Cuban cigarette, or a bottle of whiskey with more peripeteias than them.
El historiador Arturo Sánchez Sanz publica "Pretorianos", un ensayo divulgativo donde relata con precisión la actuación de los soldados de la élite del ejército romano, marcada por el heroísmo y la traición. Su poder creció hasta convertirse en la llave de la política de Roma y no tardaron en aprovecharse de ello. La exquisita preparación y medios ilimitados hicieron de estos soldados los más diestros entre las tropas romanas. \n
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Technique is the main concern of an artistic writer, and subject-matter is the general anguish of a propagandistic writer, says G. Orwell[1] (1). Art is possible in quiet moral ages, he says. Propaganda, therefore, is the fruit of unquiet moral ages, in which the “whole scheme of values is constantly menaced”. Such constant moral fear transforms the literary criticism, which is “judicious, scrupulous, fair-minded”, into something impossible. Objectivity, that is, “intellectual detachment”, is the origin of the universal masterpiece. Is the Defoe's Robinson Crusoe a technical and objective book or is it mere English propaganda? Four thesis extracted from our propagandistic experience will test the famous book of Defoe.
[1] See The Frontiers of Art and Propaganda, published in the Listener, April 30, 1941. I offer Spanish translation in Don Palafox: donpalafox.blogspot.com/2018/12/fronteras-del-arte-y-la-propaganda.html
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![El historiador Arturo Sánchez Sanz publica \](https://www.todoliteratura.es/fotos/1/2017110919211470087.jpg "El historiador Arturo Sánchez Sanz publica \")
.jpg "'Masnái', de Josep Carles Laínez")
