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The book offers a critical investigation of a wide range of
features of religious discourse in the transmitted forensic,
symbouleutic and epideictic orations of the Ten Attic Orators, a
body of 151 speeches which represents the mature flourishing of the
ancient art of public speaking and persuasion. Serafim focuses on
how the intersections between such religious discourse and the
political, legal and civic institutions of classical Athens help to
shed new light on polis identity-building and the construction of
an imagined community in three institutional contexts – the law
court, the Assembly and the Boulē: a community that unites its
members and defines the ways in which they make decisions. After a
full-scale survey of the persistently and recurrently used features
of religious discourse in Attic oratory, he contextualizes and
explains the use of specific patterns of religious discourse in
specific oratorical contexts, examining the means or restrictions
that these contexts generate for the speaker. In doing so, he
explores the cognitive/emotional and physical/sensory reactions of
the speaker and the audience when religious stimuli are provided in
orations, and how this contributes to the construction of civic and
political identity in classical Athens. Religious Discourse in
Attic Oratory and Politics will be of interest to anyone working on
classical Athens, particularly its legal institutions, on ancient
rhetoric, and ancient Greek religion and politics.
The book offers a critical investigation of a wide range of
features of religious discourse in the transmitted forensic,
symbouleutic and epideictic orations of the Ten Attic Orators, a
body of 151 speeches which represents the mature flourishing of the
ancient art of public speaking and persuasion. Serafim focuses on
how the intersections between such religious discourse and the
political, legal and civic institutions of classical Athens help to
shed new light on polis identity-building and the construction of
an imagined community in three institutional contexts - the law
court, the Assembly and the Boule: a community that unites its
members and defines the ways in which they make decisions. After a
full-scale survey of the persistently and recurrently used features
of religious discourse in Attic oratory, he contextualizes and
explains the use of specific patterns of religious discourse in
specific oratorical contexts, examining the means or restrictions
that these contexts generate for the speaker. In doing so, he
explores the cognitive/emotional and physical/sensory reactions of
the speaker and the audience when religious stimuli are provided in
orations, and how this contributes to the construction of civic and
political identity in classical Athens. Religious Discourse in
Attic Oratory and Politics will be of interest to anyone working on
classical Athens, particularly its legal institutions, on ancient
rhetoric, and ancient Greek religion and politics.
In a society where public speech was integral to the
decision-making process, and where all affairs pertaining to the
community were the subject of democratic debate, the communication
between the speaker and his audience in the public forum, whether
the law-court or the Assembly, cannot be separated from the notion
of performance. Attic Oratory and Performance seeks to make modern
Performance Studies productive for, and so make a significant
contribution to, the understanding of Greek oratory. Although quite
a lot of ink has been spilt over the performance dimension of
oratory, the focus of nearly all of the scholarship in this area
has been relatively narrow, understanding performance as only
encompassing 'delivery' - the use of gestures and vocal ploys - and
the convergences and divergences between oratory and theatre.
Serafim seeks to move beyond this relatively narrow focus to offer
a holistic perspective on performance and oratory. Using examples
from selected forensic speeches, in particular four interconnected
speeches by Aeschines (2, 3) and Demosthenes (18, 19), he argues
that oratorical performance encompassed subtle communication
between the speaker and the audience beyond mere delivery, and that
the surviving texts offer numerous glimpses of the performative
dimension of these speeches, and their links to contemporary
theatre.
This volume aims to revisit, further explore and tease out the
textual, but also non-textual sources in an attempt to reconstruct
a clearer picture of a particular aspect of sexuality, i.e. sexual
practices, in Greco-Roman antiquity. Sexual practices refers to a
part of the overarching notion of sexuality: specifically, the acts
of sexual intercourse, the erogenous capacities and genital
functions of male and female body, and any other physical or
biological actions that define one's sexual identity or
orientation. This volume aims to approach not simply the acts of
sexual intercourse themselves, but also their legal, social,
political, religious, medical, cultural/moral and interdisciplinary
(e.g. emotional, performative) perspectives, as manifested in a
range of both textual and non-textual evidence (i.e. architecture,
iconography, epigraphy, etc.). The insights taken from the
contributions to this volume would enable researchers across a
range of disciplines - e.g. sex/gender studies, comparative
literature, psychology and cognitive neuroscience - to use
theoretical perspectives, methodologies and conceptual tools to
frame the sprawling examination of aspects of sexuality in broad
terms, or sexual practices in particular.
The fact that aspects of witnesses and evidence put them in the
centre of the institutional and cultural (e.g. religious, literary)
construction of ancient societies indicates that it is important to
keep offering nuanced approaches to the topic of this volume. To
advance knowledge of the processes of presenting witnesses and
gathering, or constructing, evidence is, in fact, to better and
more fully understand the ways in which deliberative Athenian
democracy functions, what the core elements of political life and
civic identity are, and how they relate to the system of using
logos to make decisions. For, witnesses and evidence were important
prerequisites of getting the Athenian citizenship and exerting the
civic/political identity as a member of the community. It is
important, therefore, all the matters that relate to
information-gathering and decision-making to be examined anew.
Emphasis can be placed on a variety of genres to allow scholars
recreate the fullest and clearest possible image about the
witnessing and evidencing in antiquity. Chapters in this volume
include considerations of social, political, literary, and moral
theory, alongside studies of the impact of information-gathering
and decision-making in oratory and drama, with a steady focus on
the application of key ideas and values in social and political
justice to issues of pressing ethical concern.
It is perhaps a truism to note that ancient religion and rhetoric
were closely intertwined in Greek and Roman antiquity. Religion is
embedded in socio-political, legal and cultural institutions and
structures, while also being influenced, or even determined, by
them. Rhetoric is used to address the divine, to invoke the gods,
to talk about the sacred, to express piety and to articulate, refer
to, recite or explain the meaning of hymns, oaths, prayers, oracles
and other religious matters and processes. The 13 contributions to
this volume explore themes and topics that most succinctly describe
the firm interrelation between religion and rhetoric mostly in, but
not exclusively focused on, Greek and Roman antiquity, offering
new, interdisciplinary insights into a great variety of aspects,
from identity construction and performance to legal/political
practices and a broad analytical approach to transcultural
ritualistic customs. The volume also offers perceptive insights
into oriental (i.e. Egyptian magic) texts and Christian literature.
This volume acknowledges the centrality of comic invective in a
range of oratorical institutions (especially forensic and
symbouleutic), and aspires to enhance the knowledge and
understanding of how this technique is used in such con-texts of
both Greek and Roman oratory. Despite the important scholarly work
that has been done in discussing the patterns of using invective in
Greek and Roman texts and contexts, there are still notable gaps in
our knowledge of the issue. The introduction to, and the twelve
chapters of, this volume address some understudied multi-genre and
interdisciplinary topics: first, the ways in which comic invective
in oratory draws on, or has implications for, comedy and other
genres, or how these literary genres are influenced by oratorical
theory and practice, and by contemporary socio-political
circumstances, in articulating comic invective and targeting
prominent individuals; second, how comic invective sustains
relationships and promotes persuasion through unity and division;
third, how it connects with sexuality, the human body and
male/female physiology; fourth, what impact generic dichotomies,
as, for example, public-private and defence-prosecution, may have
upon using comic invective; and fifth, what the limitations in its
use are, depending on the codes of honour and decency in ancient
Greece and Rome.
This volume, comprising 24 essays, aims to contribute to a
developing appreciation of the capacity of rhetoric to reinforce
affiliation or disaffiliation to groups. To this end, the essays
span a variety of ancient literary genres (i.e. oratory, historical
and technical prose, drama and poetry) and themes (i.e.
audience-speaker, laughter, emotions, language, gender, identity,
and religion).
In a society where public speech was integral to the
decision-making process, and where all affairs pertaining to the
community were the subject of democratic debate, the communication
between the speaker and his audience in the public forum, whether
the law-court or the Assembly, cannot be separated from the notion
of performance. Attic Oratory and Performance seeks to make modern
Performance Studies productive for, and so make a significant
contribution to, the understanding of Greek oratory. Although quite
a lot of ink has been spilt over the performance dimension of
oratory, the focus of nearly all of the scholarship in this area
has been relatively narrow, understanding performance as only
encompassing 'delivery' - the use of gestures and vocal ploys - and
the convergences and divergences between oratory and theatre.
Serafim seeks to move beyond this relatively narrow focus to offer
a holistic perspective on performance and oratory. Using examples
from selected forensic speeches, in particular four interconnected
speeches by Aeschines (2, 3) and Demosthenes (18, 19), he argues
that oratorical performance encompassed subtle communication
between the speaker and the audience beyond mere delivery, and that
the surviving texts offer numerous glimpses of the performative
dimension of these speeches, and their links to contemporary
theatre.
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