Zusammenfassung d. Verlags: Key imperial and royal courts - in Han, Tang, and Song dynasty China; medieval and renaissance Europe; and Heian and Muromachi Japan - are examined in this comparative and interdisciplinary volume as loci of power and as entities that establish, influence, or counter the norms of a larger society. Contributions by twelve scholars are organized into sections on the rhetoric of persuasion, taste, communication, gender, and natural nobility. Writing from the perspectives of literature, history, and philosophy, the authors examine the use and purpose of rhetoric in their respective areas. In Rhetoric of Persuasion, we see that in both the third-century court of the last Han emperor and the fourteenth-century court of Edward II, rhetoric served to justify the deposition of a ruler and the establishment of a new regime. Rhetoric of Taste examines the court's influence on aesthetic values in China and Japan, specifically literary tastes in ninth-century China, the melding of literary and historical texts into a sort of national history in fifteenth-century Japan, and the embrace of literati painting innovations in twelfth-century China during a time when the literati themselves were out of favor. Rhetoric of Communication considers official communications to the throne in third-century China, the importance of secret communications in Charlemagne's court, and the implications of the use of classical Chinese in the Japanese court during the eighth and ninth centuries. Rhetoric of Gender offers the biography of a former Han emperor's favorite consort and studies the metaphorical possibilities of Tang palace plaints. Rhetoric of Natural Nobility focuses on Dante's efforts to confirm his nobility of soul as a poet, surmounting his non-noble ancestry, and the development of the texts that supported the political ideologies of the fifteenth-century Burgundian dukes Philip the Good and Charles the Bold.
Includes bibliographical references and index
Inhalt: Acknowledgments -- Introduction / by David R. Knechtges -- Part I. RHETORIC OF PERSUASION: 1. The Rhetoric of Imperial Abdication and Accession in a Third-Century Chinese Court: The Case of Cao Pi's Accession as Emperor of the Wei Dynasty / by David R. Knechtges; 2. The Court, Politics, and Rhetoric in England, 1310-1330 / by Scott L. Waugh -- Part II. RHETORIC OF TASTE: 3. Poems for the Emperor: Imperial Tastes in the Early Ninth Century / by Pauline Wu; 4. Claiming the Past for the Present: Ichijo Kaneyoshi and Tales of Ise / by Steven D. Carter; 5. The Emperor and the Ink Plum: Tracing a Lost Connection between Literati and Huizong's Court / by Ronald Egan -- Part III. RHETORIC OF COMMUNICATION: 6. Personal Crisis and Communication in the Life of Cao Zhi / by Robert Joe Cutter; 7. Keeping Secrets in a Dark Age / by Paul Edward Dutton; 8. The Politics of Classical Chinese in the Early Japanese Court / by Robert Borgen -- Part IV. RHETORIC OF GENDER: 9. One Sight: The Han shu Biography of Lady Li / by Stephen Owen; 10. Poetry of Palace Plaint of the Tang: Its Potential and Limitations / by Kuo-ying Wang -- Part V. RHETORIC OF NATURAL NOBILITY: 11. Dante in God's Court: The Paradise at the End of the Road / by Eugene Vance; 12. Practicing Nobility in Fifteenth-Century Burgundian Courtly Culture: Ideology and Politics / by Arjo Vanderjagt -- Index
