Behind the Headlines | History, Hope and the Political Speech

Trinity Long Room Hub Podcasts · Mar 2, 2021 · 1h 32m

Monday, 1 March 2021, 7 – 8:30pm What makes a political speech? From Aristotle to Hannah Arendt, philosophers have seen the arts of rhetoric and oratory as essential to the proper functioning of the public sphere. Some speeches, like Martin Luther King’s 1963 dream vision or Greta Thunberg’s 2019 ‘How dare you?’ address have defined a generation. Others have embedded lasting images, metaphors and poetic borrowings – ‘the iron curtain’, ‘rivers of blood’, ‘when hope and history rhyme’ – in the public imagination. In Ireland, powerful speeches have patterned our history, from Robert Emmet’s…