The Rhetoric of Suffering

The Rhetoric of Suffering draws on the Book of Job as a touchstone for the contradictions and polemics that infect various eighteenth-century works - poetry, philosophy, political oratory, accounts of exploration, commentaries on criminal law - which tried to account for the relations between human suffering and systems of secular and divine justice. Far from crystallizing or objectifying the issue of complaint, the Book of Job seems to restore its limitless and unprecedented urgency. The Rhetoric of Suffering examines complaints that fall into this dissident and singular category, and relates their improbability to the aesthetics of the sublime, and to current theories of practice and communication. Lamb focuses on William Warburton's contentious interpretation of Job, contained in his Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated (1738-1741), a prime example of the debate that emerges when Job is used as an unequivocal justification of providence.

"Specialists in philosophy, political literary theory, and the 18th century will find much to think about."--Choice
"This significant investigation...bristles with insights....essential reading for anyone interested in the way universals...threaten the particularities of experience."--Religious Studies Review
"Lamb has effectively integrated the topics-suffering, complaint, consolation, theodicy, and the sublime-that are most germane to the Job narrative and to eighteenth-century interpretations both theoretical and literary."--Christianity and Literature
"Mr. Lamb brings to his task impressive learning together with an up-to-date theoretical apparatus, and one cannot help but admire the ingenuity with which he imposes unity and coherence on a diverse range of materials."--The Scriblerian