Persuasion, Rhetoric and Roman Poetry

Offers a radical re-appraisal of rhetoric's relation to literature, with fresh insights into rhetorical sources and their reception in Roman poetry.

Irene Peirano Garrison (Author)

9781107104242, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 22 August 2019

294 pages, 1 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.1 cm, 0.56 kg

'… this carefully researched and deeply insightful book, lies in its ability to weave a compelling large-scale narrative building upon the detailed examination of a variety of different texts, both in prose and in poetry, each richly contextualised in its intellectual climate: the overall result is an original and exciting view of a fundamental chapter in the history of Roman literature and its reception.' Alessandro Schiesaro, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Previous studies on the relationship between rhetorical theory and Roman poetry have generally taken the form of lists enumerating elements of style and arrangement that poets are said to have 'borrowed' from rhetorical critics. This book examines, and ultimately questions, this entrenched theoretical model and the very notion of rhetorical influence on which this paradigm is built. Tracing key moments in the poetic and the rhetorical traditions, in the context of which the problematic relationship of difference and similarity between rhetorical and poetic discourse is discussed, the book focuses on the cultural relevance of this intellectual divide in Roman literary culture. The study of rhetorical sources, such as Cicero, Seneca the Elder and Quintilian, and of select responses in Roman poetry, sheds light on long-standing scholarly assumptions about classical poetry as artless language and about the role of rhetoric in the construction of the decline of post-classical cultures.

Part I. Poetry in Rhetoric: 1. Poetry and rhetoric and poetry in rhetoric
2. Poetry and the poetic in Seneca the Elder's Controuersiae and Suasoriae
3. The orator and the poet in Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria
Part II. Oratory in Epic: 4. The orator in the storm
5. Epic demagoguery
Part III. 'Rhetoricizing Poetry': 6. Non minus orator quam poeta: Virgil the orator in Late Antiquity.

Subject Areas: Humanities [H], Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]