Blackwell Reference Online

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As in the rest of Europe during the “Siècle des lumières,” the decadence of rhetoric was a fact in Spain. Persuasion based on the rhetorical employment of language was neither considered important nor respected, consequently leaving poetry as much more highly esteemed than eloquence (→  Aesthetics ; Persuasion ; Rhetoric and Poetics ). There was only one exception, namely, sacred oratory – that is, religious discourses given by priests from the pulpit. That is how we can interpret the translation from Latin into Spanish of the work of Fray Luis de Granada (1504–1588) about eloquent preaching entitled Rhetorica ecclesiatica , which was published in 1770. Resounding and flashy baroquism along with a recalcitrant conservatism were the most characteristic features of rhetoric at this time, in sacred as well as in profane oratory. The Jesuit priest José Francisco Isla (1703–1781) wrote a novel, entitled Historia del famoso predicador Fray Gerundio de Campazas, alias Zotes (1770), which was a satire against the bombastic eloquence of sacred oratory in his time. Fray Gerundio enters a religious order, where he learns to preach in a grandiloquent style full of baroquisms, inopportune and confused citations of Latin authors, and many other nonsensical extravagances. The work of Ignacio de Luzán (1702–1754), entitled Arte de hablar, o sea, retórica de las conversaciones (1729) is an ... log in or subscribe to read full text