Curated category
Rhetoric theorists
- George OrwellGeorge Orwell did not exist on any birth certificate. The man behind the name was Eric Arthur Blair, born on the 25th of June 1903 in Motihari, in the Bengal…
- PlatoPlato wrote that the safest general characterization of European philosophy is that it consists of a series of footnotes to him.
- AristotleAncient Greek scholars gave Aristotle a name reserved for one man: among medieval Muslim scholars he was "The First Teacher", and to Christians like Thomas…
- Augustine of HippoAugustine of Hippo was born on the 13th of November 354 in Thagaste, a small town in Roman North Africa that today is Souk Ahras, Algeria.
- John MiltonJohn Milton sold the rights to one of the greatest poems in the English language for five pounds. On the 27th of April 1667, he handed Paradise Lost to the…
- Michel FoucaultMichel Foucault was born on the 15th of October 1926 in Poitiers, France, into a family where a surgeon father expected his son to follow in his footsteps.
- QuintilianMarcus Fabius Quintilianus arrived in the world around 35 AD within the town of Calagurris, now known as Calahorra in La Rioja.
- ProtagorasProtagoras of Abdera, born around 490 BC in the coastal city of Thrace opposite the island of Thasos, came to be one of the most provocative thinkers of the…
- Francis BaconFrancis Bacon dictated his last letter from a borrowed bed in Highgate, his fingers, he wrote, so disjointed with sickness that he could not steadily hold a…
- Dionysius of HalicarnassusDionysius of Halicarnassus arrived in Rome sometime after the civil wars ended, carrying a scholar's ambition and a Greek's outsider eye.
- Edward GibbonIt was on the night of the 27th of June 1787, between eleven and midnight, that Edward Gibbon wrote the last lines of his life's great work in a summer-house…
- Juan Luis VivesOn the 6th of March 1493, a boy named Juan Luis Vives was born in Valencia to a family that had converted from Judaism to Christianity decades before.