ABSTRACT
La my, Bernard (1640-1715) Orator, teacher of philosophy and theology, author of L'Art de parler. Fervent disciple of Rene Descartes and friend of Nicolas Malebranche and Port Royalists Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, Lamy devoted his life to teaching and writing texts for student use. Lamy taught at the seminary of Grenoble and at Rouen and was exiled twice during his career because of his Cartesian sympathies. Among other works, he published Entretiens sur les sciences (1683), Les Elements de geometrie (1685), and Traite de perspective (1701), but it is L'Art de parler (1675) for which he is best known. Named to mirror the Port Royalists' L'Art de penser; Lamy's book went through five editions and nine printings, becoming enlarged as Lamy refined his rhetorical theory during the last twenty years of his life. The Art of Speaking, also known as the Port Royal rhetoric, was first published in translation in England in 1676 and reprinted in 1696 and 1708.
