THE ART OF SPEAKING FRENCH WELL. DEUX-SÈVRES. 1790. A notebo - Lot 425

THE ART OF SPEAKING FRENCH WELL. DEUX-SÈVRES. 1790. A notebook containing 112 handwritten pages by an AMERICAN titled “This Rhetoric Notebook Belongs to Me, L. ROCHEFORT, American, in NIORT on November 9, 1790…1791 .” An interesting course—or treatise—from the Revolutionary era on the art of speaking French well, peppered with quotations, examples, and explanations. Numerous chapters: “FRENCH RHETORIC. Preliminary Discourse on Rhetoric, on the definition: ‘The art of speaking appropriately on all kinds of subjects to persuade; this art extends to all the means and resources that eloquence employs… ”; the parts of Rhetoric; invention; proofs or arguments; rhetorical clichés; the enumeration of parts; genus and species; causes and effects, composition, opposites, similarity and difference, circumstances, extrinsic oratorical devices, the various types of evidence or arguments, the antimeon, the epichereme, the dilemma, manners, oratorical propriety or precautions, passions, disposition, the exordium, proportion and division, narration, proof or confirmation that includes refutation, the peroration, and the conclusion, of eloquence, the purity of language, the choice of thoughts, sentences, styles, the sublime style, the sublimity of sentiments, the sublimity of figures of speech,… allegory, irony, hyperbole, periphrasis, repetition, figures of thought, antithesis, interrogation, parallels…” notebook with a parchment cover, labeled “D’ÉPIERRIS, Stationer and Bookbinder… residing in NIORT, rue du Palais, near the well.”