“The renewed interest in Gracián represented by this outstanding collection of essays demonstrates the legitimacy of the enterprise of academic scholarship. Whereas in recent decades Gracián, without denying his cultural importance, has been read primarily for the ingenuity of his rhetorical propositions and the complexity of his intellectual thought, Rhetoric and Politics underscores the importance of ‘Gracián’ as a site of textual production for examining questions regarding subject formation, sign systems and semiotic interpretation, technologies of social control, and social ideology. Rhetoric and Politics will do much to stimulate a renewed interest in Gracián and in the originality of Spanish Baroque culture.” David William Foster, Arizona State University