The Counsel of the Fox. Examples of Counsel from the Commedia, Short Stories, Letters and Treatises
The Counsel of the Fox. Examples of Counsel from the Commedia, Short Stories, Letters and Treatises

Summary/Abstract: If the aim of argumentation is that of increasing acceptance of the orator’s thesis (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, 49), then the ultimate goal of counsel, a widespread argumentative practice within the genres of discourse as well as literature, is indeed persuasion. The subject of this essay—that is, the rhetoric of counsel—allows us to observe the interpretative richness of this element of the “new rhetoric” through examples offered by Dante, Giovanni Boccaccio, Lucrezia Borgia and Niccolò Machiavelli, straddling the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, bridging the fields of literature and history.

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