A second piece of suggestive evidence for Gassendi's materialism is historiographical and rhetorical in character.
He possesses a sometimes dizzying rhetorical intelligence his characters argue with the agility of top litigators and seemingly boundless imaginative sympathy: the figures who populate the most winning of eighteenth-century picaresques are cardboard cutouts compared with Richardson's principals.
Most important, he shows us how such rhetorical devices reveal character and create meaning.
But our view is that while there have been some unfortunate excesses, there is also nothing inherently wrong with sharp exchanges and rhetorical attacks about character and stands on issues in a campaign.
We look for strength of character and rhetorical talent.
But its characters are rhetorical mouthpieces, and its subplots manipulative.
"Do I have an original thought in my bald head?" Spike Jonze's follow-up to Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, opens with this rhetorical question from its lead character, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage).
It taps into his natural character strengths and practiced rhetorical gestures.
Most people here see him as a leader of the free world, who combines intelligence and strength of character with charm and rhetorical lustre".
On Wednesday night, 1.5 million people watched as South Park introduced a Donald Trump character, explained with a rhetorical bullhorn that his anti-immigration platform preys on fear and hostility, then promptly showed the character get viciously murdered.
