erotema

plural erotemas · plural erotemata

1. countablerhetoricuncountableThe rhetorical use of questions, especially questions which strongly imply their own answer.

   Erotema probably occupies more space in Camm's writings than does any other single device.

   1977, Joseph A. Leo Lemay, Essays in Early Virginia Literature Honoring Richard Beale Davis, page 173

   3 more examples

   Since the simple question, though technically erotema, is scarcely a figure however, I leave it out of the discussion.

   1939, Peter MacNaughton Miller, The Rhetoric of Sidney's Arcadia, page 206

   Here erotema is fused with the logical fallacy begging the question: for example , "Shall we let her pull the wool over our eyes?"

   1995, Pynchon Notes - Issues 32-35, page 17

   The narrator's use of erotema would seem to be a frantic rhetorical attempt to encourage acceptance in his audience of the theory of perversity . Through erotema he is asking his auditors to think deductively (to move from the general to the specific) by saying something like this: "Look, everyone has succumbed to perverse impulse now and then, right?— so you'll believe me when I tell you that perversity overcame me too, on the occasion when I hanged my poor cat."

   2005, Brett Zimmerman, Edgar Allan Poe: Rhetoric and Style, page 211