Christian Plain Style

The Evolution of a Spiritual Ideal

Locating the roots of the plain style in secular and philosophic classicism, Auksi examines theories on classical rhetoric from Demetrius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus to Cicero and Quintilian. He shows how biblicists deliberately transformed a heathen mode, and demonstrates that rhetoric served a...

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Bibliographic Details
Author:Peter Auksi
Published: McGill-Queens'University, Montreal, 1995
Language:Swedish
Total Pages:XII - 371
ISBN:978-0773512207
Format:Book
Topic:- Biography > Relations and Sources > Sources/General studies > Rhetoric
- Works > Augustine writer > Ancient literary culture
- Works > Augustine writer > Rhetoric. Dialectic > Christian rhetoric
- Doctrine > From man to God > Divine revelation > Exegesis > [Exégèse des textes du Nouveau Testament] > Epistles of St. Paul > Themes > [Spiritualité de Paul]
Status:Active
Description
Summary:Locating the roots of the plain style in secular and philosophic classicism, Auksi examines theories on classical rhetoric from Demetrius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus to Cicero and Quintilian. He shows how biblicists deliberately transformed a heathen mode, and demonstrates that rhetoric served a pragmatic function among the church fathers. He also discusses the different responses of Renaissance translators, rhetors, polemicists, and humanists to the stylized medieval inheritance, paying particular attention to the issue of sacred plainness in preaching. The epilogue provides a convincing argument for the decline of the plain style in the late seventeenth century and describes how the almost vanished ideal of plainness was transformed by Methodists, Quakers, Mennonites, Amish, and Hutterites. Cf. Chap. 4 (110-143): Channels of Transmission: Augustine and Paul.

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