The Ghosts of the Past

The Ghosts of the Past
Author: Basil Dufallo
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2007
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0814210449

The ancient Romans quite literally surrounded themselves with the dead: masks of the dead were in the atria of their houses, funerals paraded through their main marketplace, and tombs lined the roads leading into and out of the city. In Roman literature as well, the dead occupy a prominent place, indicating a close and complex relationship between literature and society. The evocation of the dead in the Latin authors of the first century BCE both responds and contributes to changing socio-political conditions during the transition from the Republic to the Empire. To understand the literary life of the Roman dead, The Ghosts of the Past develops a new perspective on Latin literature's interaction with Roman culture. Drawing on the insights of sociology, anthropology, and performance theory, Basil Dufallo argues that authors of the late Republic and early Principate engage strategically with Roman behaviors centered on the dead and their world in order to address urgent political and social concerns. Republican literature exploits this context for the ends of political competition among the clan-based Roman elite, while early imperial literature seeks to restage the republican practices for a reformed Augustan society. Calling into question boundaries of genre and literary form, Dufallo's study will revise current understandings of Latin literature as a cultural and performance practice. Works as diverse as Cicero's speeches, Propertian elegy, Horace's epodes and satires, and Vergil's Aeneid appear in a new light as performed texts interacting with other kinds of cultural performance from which they might otherwise seem isolated.

The Art of Great Speeches

The Art of Great Speeches
Author: Dennis Glover
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2011-02-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1139493876

What makes a great speech 'great'? The Art of Great Speeches uses insights from classical thinkers to reveal how great orators such as Barack Obama, Martin Luther King, the Kennedys, Al Gore and Hitler have persuaded their audiences so convincingly. Featuring excerpts of 70 of the world's greatest speeches in history and drama, this fascinating book breaks down the key elements of classical and modern oratory to reveal the rhetorical techniques that make them so memorable. It shows how master speechwriters connect with their audiences, seize a moment, project character, use facts convincingly and destroy their opponents' arguments as they try to force the hand of history or create memorable drama. Part history, part defence of oratory, part call for political inspiration, part professional handbook, The Art of Great Speeches does what no other book does - it explains why these speeches are great.

Reading Republican Oratory

Reading Republican Oratory
Author: Christa Gray
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2018-02-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0191092312

Public speech was a key aspect of politics in Republican Rome, both in theory and in practice, and recent decades have seen a surge in scholarly discussion of its significance and performance. Yet the partial nature of the surviving evidence means that our understanding of its workings is dominated by one man, whose texts are the only examples to have survived in complete form since antiquity: Cicero. This collection of essays aims to broaden our conception of the oratory of the Roman Republic by exploring how it was practiced by individuals other than Cicero, whether major statesmen, jobbing lawyers, or, exceptionally, the wives of politicians. It focuses particularly on the surviving fragments of such oratory, with individual essays tackling the challenges posed both by the partial and often unreliable nature of the evidence about these other Roman orators-often known to us chiefly through the tendentious observations of Cicero himself-and the complex intersections of the written fragments and the oral phenomenon. Collectively, the essays are concerned with the methods by which we are able to reconstruct non-Ciceronian oratory and the exploration of new ways of interpreting this evidence to tell us about the content, context, and delivery of those speeches. They are arranged into two thematic Parts, the first addressing questions of reception, selection, and transmission, and the second those of reconstruction, contextualization, and interpretation: together they represent a comprehensive overview of the non-Ciceronian speeches that will be of use to all ancient historians, philologists, and literary classicists with an interest in the oratory of the Roman Republic.

Roman Theories of Translation

Roman Theories of Translation
Author: Siobhán McElduff
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2013-08-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1135069069

For all that Cicero is often seen as the father of translation theory, his and other Roman comments on translation are often divorced from the complicated environments that produced them. The first book-length study in English of its kind, Roman Theories of Translation: Surpassing the Source explores translation as it occurred in Rome and presents a complete, culturally integrated discourse on its theories from 240 BCE to the 2nd Century CE. Author Siobhán McElduff analyzes Roman methods of translation, connects specific events and controversies in the Roman Empire to larger cultural discussions about translation, and delves into the histories of various Roman translators, examining how their circumstances influenced their experience of translation. This book illustrates that as a translating culture, a culture reckoning with the consequences of building its own literature upon that of a conquered nation, and one with an enormous impact upon the West, Rome's translators and their theories of translation deserve to be treated and discussed as a complex and sophisticated phenomenon. Roman Theories of Translation enables Roman writers on translation to take their rightful place in the history of translation and translation theory.

Ancient Rhetoric and Oratory

Ancient Rhetoric and Oratory
Author: Thomas Habinek
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 144
Release: 2008-04-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0470775327

This book introduces readers to the ancient rhetorical tradition by investigating key questions about the origins, nature and importance of rhetoric. Explores the role of the orator, especially the two greatest figures of the tradition, Demosthenes and Cicero Investigates the place of rhetoric at the center of ancient education Considers the role of rhetoric since the end of antiquity. Includes a glossary of proper names and technical terms; a chronological table of political events, authors, orators, and rhetorical works; and suggestions for further reading.

The Theatre of Justice

The Theatre of Justice
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2017-03-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9004341870

The Theatre of Justice contains 17 chapters that offer a holistic view of performance in Greek and Roman oratorical and political contexts. This holistic view consists of the examination of two areas of techniques. The first one relates to the delivery of speeches and texts: gesticulation, facial expressions and vocal communication. The second area includes a wide diversity of techniques that aim at forging a rapport between the speaker and the audience, such as emotions, language and style, vivid imagery and the depiction of characters. In this way the volume develops a better understanding of the objectives of public speaking, the mechanisms of persuasion, and the extent to which performance determined the outcome of judicial and political contests.

Juvenal and the Satiric Emotions

Juvenal and the Satiric Emotions
Author: Catherine Keane
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2015-01-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199981906

In his sixteen verse Satires, Juvenal explores the emotional provocations and pleasures associated with social criticism and mockery. He makes use of traditional generic elements such as the first-person speaker, moral diatribe, narrative, and literary allusion to create this new satiric preoccupation and theme. Juvenal defines the satirist figure as an emotional agent who dramatizes his own response to human vices and faults, and he in turn aims to engage other people's feelings. Over the course of his career, he adopts a series of rhetorical personae that represent a spectrum of satiric emotions, encouraging his audience to ponder satire's proper emotional mode and function. Juvenal first offers his signature indignatio with its associated pleasures and discomforts, then tries on subtler personae that suggest dry detachment, callous amusement, anxiety, and other affective states. As Keane shows, the satiric emotions are not only found in the author's rhetorical performances, but they are also a major part of the human farrago that the Satires purport to treat. Juvenal's poems explore the dynamic operation of emotions in society, drawing on diverse ancient literary, rhetorical, and philosophical sources. Each poem uniquely engages with different texts and ideas to reveal the unsettling powers of its emotional mode. Keane also analyzes the "emotional plot" of each book of Satires and the structural logic of the entire series with its wide range of subjects and settings. From his famous angry tirades to his more puzzling later meditations, Juvenal demonstrates an enduring interest in the relationship between feelings and moral judgment.

CICERO

CICERO
Author: Marcus Tullius Cicero
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2010-04-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0521882249

A 2010 Latin text and commentary for Cicero's career-making speech defending Sextus Roscius on the charge of murdering his father.