The power of stories and the practice of rhetoric | 10-Minute Talks | The British Academy |
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With the rise of the internet and social media, the performance of storytelling and the arts of oratory have returned to centre stage. In this talk ahead of World Book Day, Marina Warner argues that in an era of public disinformation, the study of the uses of rhetoric, as deployed in many forms of literature, is urgently needed. Rhetoric used to be a pillar of literary education, and understanding its processes remains vital to sharpening epistemic vigilance and developing countermeasures to the damaging falsehoods and rumours in circulation. Literature and imagination, action and reality interact through narratives and how convincingly they are told matters. Between stories that open minds and stories that close them, rhetoric – the modes and voices of storytelling – plays a crucial role.
Her memoir, Inventory of a Life Mislaid: An Unreliable Memoir is published on 4 March 2021. Speaker: Professor Dame Marina Warner FBA, FRSL, Professor of English and Creative Writing, Birkbeck, University of London; Distinguished Fellow, All Souls College, University of Oxford; Professorial Research Fellow, SOAS; and President of the Royal Society of Literature. 10-Minute Talks are a series of pre-recorded talks from Fellows of the British Academy screened each Wednesday on YouTube and also available on Apple Podcasts. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-british-academy-10-minute-talks/id1530020476 Subtitles, also known as closed captions, are available on our YouTube videos. You can access them by clicking on the 'CC' button or gear icon on the video. The 'CC' button and gear icon are usually located at the bottom of videos. For a transcript of this talk, visit our website: https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/podcasts/10-minute-talks-power-stories-practice-rhetoric/ Find out more about the British Academy: https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/ For future events, visit our website: https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/ Subscribe to our email newsletter: https://email.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/p/6P7Q-5PO/newsletter Image: Professor Dame Marina Warner FBA. Photograph by Edward Park. |