Declamation, Paternity, and Roman Identity
Authority and the Rhetorical Self

Radical re-evaluation of the genre of declamation and its social and psychic import.

Erik Gunderson (Author)

9780521820059, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 June 2003

298 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.608 kg

'This book suits its subject well. Gunderson's treatment will surely stimulate debate'. Anthony Corbeill, University of Kansas

This book explores the much maligned and misunderstood genre of declamation. Instead of a bastard rhetoric, declamation should be seen as a venue within which the rhetoric of the legitimate self is constructed. These fictions of the self are uncannily real, and these stagey dramas are in fact rehearsals for the serious play of Roman identity. Critics of declamation find themselves recapitulating the very logic of the genre they are refusing. When declamation is read in the light of the contemporary theory of the subject a wholly different picture emerges: this is a canny game played with and within the rhetoric of the self. This book makes broad claims for what is often seen as a narrow topic. An appendix includes a fresh translation and brief discussion of a sample of surviving examples of declamation.

Preface: Acheron
Introduction: a praise of folly
Part I. Where Ego Was …: 1. Recalling declamation
2. Fathers and sons
bodies and places
3. Living declamation
4. Raving among the insane
Part II. Let Id Be: 5. An Cimbrice loquendum sit: speaking and unspeaking the language of homosexual desire
6. Paterni nominis religio
By way of conclusion
Appendix 1: further reading
Appendix 2: sample declamations
List of references
Index locorum
General index.

Subject Areas: Gender studies, gender groups [JFSJ], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB], Literary theory [DSA], Semantics, discourse analysis, etc [CFG]