A way of reading -- Poetry and the world of two: cultural criticism and the ideal of friendship in the Iliad -- Dissolution of meaning: Thucydides' history of his world -- Reconstitution of language and self in a community of two: Plato's Gorgias -- Making the reader make his language: Swift's A tale of a tub -- Teaching a language of morality: Johnson's Rambler essays -- "Conversation, rational and playful": the language of friendship in Jane Austen's Emma -- Making a public world: the constitution of language and community in Burke's Reflections -- Constituting a culture of argument: the possibilities of American law.
