Search results for ""Author Nathalie Zimpfer""

The present study is the first monograph dedicated to Jonathan Swift's sermons. As critics have noted, the sermons are the least examined area within (the) least examined area of Swift studies (Weinbrot 2008). While Swift's own disparaging comment on his homilies (the idlest trifling stuff that ever was writ) might partly account for this critical disaffection, we suggest that his sermons may be fruitfully apprehended with a new approach of Swift as preacher of his homiletic language, as well as his use of language at large. This study presents a radically new perspective on the sermons, demonstrating that linguistic pragmatics reveals that they are characterised by a silent rhetoric, which complexifies the vision of the sermons as characterised by narrow and shallow orthodoxy (Nokes, 1985, p. 278). While this study leans toward the textual, the theory of language which underpins it is inclusive and makes it possible to reconcile text and context. Consequently, the overall approach is

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