Poetics and Rhetoric

This course aims to provide students with the core concepts of rhetoric—approached in its diverse linguistic, visual, and performative forms—as an art of the expression and the representation of different pathic states and cognitive processes, by way of a literature that allows the student to engage with different types of texts (primary sources, classical references in the field, critical essays, and current research perspectives). The proposed path will also consider rhetoric in its interdisciplinary relationship with political philosophy. The students will be able to employ the acquired notions particularly in the professional areas of editor of texts and images, operator in the field of education and popularization, operator of cultural projects in the public and private domain, and project management.

Knowledge and understanding:
Students will acquire a basic knowledge of the terminology and the reasoning used within the field of rhetoric, whose discussion falls within the realm of aesthetics, given the tendency for persuasive speech to be characterized as "sensible." Along the way, students will be introduced to the core literature and methodologies. Finally, they will learn the history of rhetoric, of its nature, and of its purpose within the framework of the human sciences, and aesthetics in particular.

Ability to apply knowledge and understanding
Students will acquire the skills necessary to apply the conceptual framework of rhetoric to the critical reading of verbal speeches, and of discursive and bodily performances, through recourse to an adequate specialized terminology. They will be able to apply this knowledge in commenting on the reference texts of the field. Students will be ale to orient themselves within the standard bibliographical apparatus. They will be able to distinguish a rhetorical speech from a propagandistic declaration and a communicative act, as well as to recognize its effects on the audience.