Variability of the 'Ancients' and its Function in the Late 6th - Early 7th Centuries: Cassiodorus, Gregory the Great, and Isidore of Seville (original) (raw)
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Late antique classicizing rhetoric, after a long period of neglect, is now the object of an increasing number of studies. In order to underline this revaluation, scholars have started to talk about the ‘Third Sophistic’. This paper demonstrates that the use of this term is highly problematic: scholars disagree not only on the precise meaning of the term (when does it start or end? Does it comprise only ‘pagan’ or also Christian literature? etc.), but also on the relationship between this so-called ‘Third Sophistic’ and the Second Sophistic. Thus according to many scholars, late Antiquity was a time when sophists lost their social influence and position to bishops, lawyers, and military strongmen. In reality, however, the perceived differences between the literature of the early and that of the later Empire originate not so much in the texts of both periods, but rather in the different scholarly methodologies used to study each of them. Rather than adopting the term ‘Third Sophistic’, this paper therefore argues that the dynamic models of literary interpretation that are now standard in studies of the Second Sophistic can be fruitfully applied to late antique rhetoric as well. Studied from this perspective, classicizing late antique rhetoric, far from having fossilized, turns out to have transformed itself creatively in order to continue to play an important role within a society in transformation.
Abstract. In this paper I intend to analyse in parallel two well-known texts, Horace’s Epistle 2.1 to Augustus and some sections of Aper’s second speech in the Dialogus de oratoribus, in order to point out some significant similarities of theme and argument. Both Horace and the character of Aper portray antiquity, a codified and ‘authorized’ section of the past, in a negative way, as a disvalue, and present themselves in turn as champions of the present and the moderns. They both offer a conceptualization of antiquity: they investigate and, at the same time, try to weaken its (alleged) chronological basis as well as the axiological value commonly ascribed to it. This is interesting in itself, because of their theoretical and definitional approach, because they dilate upon the topic and because of the set of arguments, which are largely similar: 1. Identification of the fautor[es] veterum / antiquorum admiratores as a target. 2. Conceptualization of antiquity as axiological criterion. 3. Refusal of a method depreciative of the present. 4. Relativization of ‘antiquity’ as a criterion (chronological and axiological): a. Request for a limit and its fixing at 100 years; b. Use of paradoxical arguments. 5. Consciousness of the chronological gap between the two cultures of Greece and Rome. 6. Presentation and critique of a canon. 7. Change and gradual development of the arts towards an only partially or not yet achieved acme. 8. On the side of the moderns: proposals for a new canon. (A textual proposal is also made for Dialogus de oratoribus 16.7).
The Rhetoric of Experts in (Early) Greek Discourse. Some Tools (CAR talk, 2024)
In this paper I present and describe some literary devices or textual practices ('tools', arranged in 'tool sets') that we can observe in early Greek texts written to store or transmit knowledge. Some of these tools are, I think, imported from other fields, perhaps even non-Greek cultures, but all contribute something to the epistemic status of these texts. Although they do not show up in conventional handbooks of rhetoric, many of them have proved indispensable in later theoretical discourse, even in our own. Thus, they constitute elements of a rhetoric of experts. These tools are (in alphabetical order): adaptability (integration of ever more heterogeneous elements, e.g. polemics, numbers, diagrams)-archivality (authority through trust in details, names, lists, etc.)-distance (authors maintain a distance to what they are writing about; see 'impersonality', 'objectivity')-highlighted logic (structure of reasoning, underlined in order to persuade)-impersonality (extreme form of 'distance': author seems not to be present in his text)-intersubjective trust (forms of binding argument, see 'highlighted logic')-(lettered) diagrams (an efficient way to coordinate text and diagrammatic argument)-monumentality (textual quality that maintains lasting qualityobjectivity (quality of argument that claims not to be contingent upon an individual viewpoint, see 'impersonality')-polemics (technique of distancing)-rich/lean terms (choice of terms with respect to aesthetic rather than epistemic qualities)-standardization (expression of the same parts of argument with the same means of text)-systematicity (claim of a structural homology of text, knowledge and objects of knowledge).
Foreword to Literary language and its public in late Latin antiquity and the Middle Ages
Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, 1993
In this, his final book, Erich Auerbach writes, "My purpose is always to write history." Tracing the transformations of classical Latin rhetoric from late antiquity to the modern era, he explores major concerns raised in his Mimesis: the historical and social contexts in which writings were received, and issues of aesthetics, semantics, stylistics, and sociology that anticipate the concerns of the new historicism.
Cite and Sound: The Prosaics of Quotation in the Ancient Novel
Ancient narrative, 2015
This article discusses three examples of the way that ancient novels mobilize the resources of performance traditions to create the particular effects sought for by the novelists, an analysis that is part of a ‘prosaics' of the ancient novel. Cases of writing and reading a letter, a story within a story, and ec-phrasis reveal different aspects of our novelists' strategies for exploring the tension between public and private forms of discourse. A genre that is, as Bakhtin notes, younger than writing, the novel is especially suited to conflating voices and positions in respect to the organizing position of a reader. Stephen Nimis is Professor of Classics at Miami University. His work on narrative include a book on the epic, Narrative Semiotics in the Epic Tradition (1987), and articles on narratological issues in the ancient novel (‘The Prosaics of the Ancient Novel,' ‘Memory and Description in the Ancient Novel,' ‘The Sense of Open-endedness in the Ancient Novel&#...
Modern Literary Theory and the Ancient Novel: Poetics and Rhetoric, edited by Marília P. Futre Pinheiro, Stephen A. Nimis, and Massimo Fusillo, 2022
Modern critical terminology is full of references to ancient literary theory, whose precepts are often used as a starting point for new theories. Unfortunately, the opposite situation does not occur often. While there has been some progress in recent years in applying the methods of modern critical theory and the insights of related disciplines such as narratology, reader-response theory and modern and post-modern criticism to classical literature and specifically to the area of the ancient novel, only sporadically has classical literature been studied and analyzed according to these exegetical trends. The course taken by research in literary studies has also demonstrated that rhetoric is a fundamental discipline forTheory of Literature and for literary praxis. It is not only a science for the future but also a science à la mode, which finds its own place on the edge of structuralism, “New Criticism”, and semiology. In the Greek world under the Roman Empire, the tradition of rhetorical learning reached its heyday in the second century A.D., with the cultural movement named as “Second Sophistic”. Despite the emphasis on rhetoric, literary culture lato senso was was also part of it, granting a special place to poetics and literary criticism. In the wake of this hermeneutical and interdisciplinary approach, the papers assembled in this volume explore significant issues, which are linked to the narrative structure of the ancient novel and to the tradition of rhetorical learning, both envisaged as a web of well-constructed narrative devices.