Human life is susceptible of changing suddenly of shifting inadvertently of appearing
differently of varying unpredictably of being altered deliberately of advancing fortuitously
of commencing or ending accidentally of a certain malleability. In theory any human being is
potentially capacitated to conceive of-and convey-the chance view or fact that matters may be
otherwise or not at all with respect to other lifeforms this might be said animal's
distinctive characteristic. This state of play is both an everyday phenomenon and an
indispensable prerequisite for exceptional innovations in culture and science: contingency is
the condition of possibility for any of the arts-be they dominantly concerned with thinking
crafting or enacting. While their scope and method may differ the (f)act of reckoning
with-and taking advantage of-contingency renders rhetoricians and philosophers associates after
all. In this regard Aristotle and Blumenberg will be exemplary hence provide the framework.
Between these diachronic bridgeheads close readings applying the nexus of rhetoric and
contingency to a selection of (Early) Modern texts and authors are intercalated-among them La
Celestina Machiavelli Shakespeare Wilde Fontane.
