Re: The humility topos

["Robert J. MacG. Dawson" <rdawson@cs.smu.ca>]

On 6/28/2010 4:49 PM, Michael Barr wrote:
> Yesterday's NY Times magazine had an article about the British
> experimental novelist David Mitchell. Mitchell told a story to the author
> of the article about how, after an event in New Zealand a woman, a
> medievalist there asked him if knew about the humility topos. I imagine
> that Mitchell came across as very humble. At any rate she went on to say,
> and I quote because I am not certain how to parse it, "in the medieval era
> humility was seen as a great virtue. The humility topos was used for
> those abbots...who were actually monsters of arrogance, but were always
> banging on about how humble they were...". The woman said to him, "Watch
> out for the humility topos" and then disappeared.

 	Being but little learned, I looked this up. Wikipedia has (under
"Inventio")

 	Topoi are categories that help delineate the relationships among ideas.

 	Specifically, the "humility topos" is the rhetorical strategy of
pretending ignorance or naivete to entertain or disarm the listener.

http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_h.html

 	Identifying the subobject classifier must be left to wiser heads than
my own.

 	-Robert Dawson


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