The Tongue is Also a Fire: Essays on Conversation, Rhetoric and the Transmission of Culture. . . and on C.S. Lewis

by James Como

Overview

With conversation and its rhetoric as the axel of his wheel and culture as its rim, Professor Como examines many spokes that connect one to the other, from teaching and life in higher education, to President Obama, Mickey Mantle, movies, LBJ, Peru, Shakespeare, and C. S. Lewis. Alive with wit, direct address, rich experience, and much learning worn lightly, Como's approaches include scholarship, journalism, how-to instruction, criticism, and anecdote. Yet always at the center is how our conversations build our culture.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940151072380
Publisher:	New English Review Press
Publication date:	10/09/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	405 KB

About the Author

JAMES COMO is professor emeritus of rhetoric and public communication at York College of the City University of New York, where he taught for forty-four years. His interests lie in the interaction of culture and communication, especially as spoken, and in the life and work of C. S. Lewis, about whom his books, articles, lectures, and radio and television commentary are widely known. He has also published cultural criticism, short stories and poetry, as well as a sequence of tales for children, The Folk Tales of Brusco and Giovanni.

Editorial Reviews

The term "rhetoric" is much abused these days ("Oh, that's just rhetoric!"), and the art it denotes doesn't fare much better. James Como has worked all his professional life to change that, one CUNY class at a time, and he carries on the good work in this book. He tells of his adventures in the classroom (some of them moving, some hilarious, some hair-raising), and then applies the tools of rhetoric to a variety of writers (Shakespeare, C. S. Lewis, Thornton Wilder), two politicians (Obama, LBJ)

New English Review - Linda Bridges

Rhetoric, properly conceived, is a noble intellectual discipline reaching at least as far back as Aristotle and forward through the medieval Trivium and other stops to modern masters such as Richard Weaver, an ethical imperative for honesty and clarity in argument, explication--and conversation. Professor Como belongs to, as he contributes to, that tradition. These essays are instructive and elegant. . . and entertaining...

New English Review - Samuel Hux