PRESENTATION OF DAVID PUJANTE'S BOOK: 'THE WORLD IN THE WORD. RHETORIC AS AN ANTIDOTE TO FOOLS'. RAMÓN ALONSO LUZZY CULTURAL CENTER

SYNOPSIS

The word names and transforms the world. The origin of its study appears in ancient Greece with rhetoric and is more relevant today than ever. Rhetoric, as a critical analysis and constructive reflection of social discourse, is an essential learning for respect, coexistence and the neutralization of conflicts in a society as discursively polarized as ours, where fake news and haters are rampant, with partial, bitter and thoughtless discourses.

David Pujante proposes a vindication, as well as an update, of this classic discipline, showing the historical process of its neglect and the reasons for its current boom in our media society. He also deals with the political-social use of language, its persuasive effects and its important consequences for human life. Rhetorical discourse is basic for the oral society to which we have returned, after centuries of written civilization. Today it is clear that we are social beings in language and that we build our societies in everyday language. So we need to return to rhetoric to learn to think from the mastery of our language, to know how to analyze other people's discourses and to be able to argue our own with foundation.

 

BIOGRAPHY

David Pujante is a university professor and poet. Professor of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature at the University of Valladolid and currently Honorary Professor. He has also been Professor of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature at the universities of Alicante and A Coruña. He has participated in conferences and seminars at universities in Europe and Latin America, and is the author of numerous articles and books published in prestigious international journals and publishers. He has been a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Rhetorica (University of California) and has been a member, as a Spanish member, of the Council of the International Society of the History of Rhetoric. In 2018, he was awarded the 2018 Dámaso Alonso Prize by the Hispano-American Academy of Fine Letters for his academic and poetic career. His collection of poems El sueño de una sombra has been selected for the National Literature Prize in 2020.

Presenting the book: Dionisio Espejo Paredes