Rhetoric in Byzantium: Papers from the Thirty-fifth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Exeter College, University of Oxford, March 2001

by Jeffreys,Elizabeth

• ISBN13: 9780754634539
• ISBN10: 0754634531
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-06-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Rhetoric in Byzantium explores the ways in which rhetoric functioned in Byzantine society - as a tool for the effective communication of ideas and ideologies, but at times also a barrier that inhibited the expression of real feelings and everyday realities, and imposed a burden of decoding on outsiders. After an introduction on the practical and textual background to Byzantine rhetoric, the essays are grouped in five sections. The first two deal with the basis of rhetoric in Byzantium and its public uses, principally in imperial and ecclesiastical ceremonial. The next sections look at how rhetoric affects the definition of literature in a Byzantine context and the aesthetic to be used in approaching Byzantine literature, with reference to current critical approaches, and specifically at the role of rhetoric in the writing of history - does it only obscure the facts, or does the rhetorical process itself provide information at other levels? The final essays examine the interaction of the written word and pictorial representation and the question of whether real connections between rhetorical training and artistic production can be demonstrated.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	vii
Abbreviations	ix
List of Figures	xi
Introduction	1	(8)
Elizabeth Jeffreys
Section I The uses of rhetoric
Rhetoric and writing strategies in the ninth century	9	(14)
Martha Vinson
The rhetoric of Kekaumenos	23	(16)
Charlotte Roueche
Teachers and students of rhetoric in the late Byzantine period	39	(16)
C.N. Constantinides
Byzantine imperial panegyric as advice literature (1204--c. 1350)	55	(20)
Dimiter G. Angelov
Section II Public uses of rhetoric
Court poetry: questions of motifs, structure and function	75	(12)
Wolfram Horandner
`Rhetorical' texts	87	(14)
Michael Jeffreys
Dramatic device or didactic tool? The function of dialogue in Byzantine preaching	101	(16)
Mary Cunningham
Section III Literature and rhetoric
How should a Byzantine text be read?	117	(10)
Jakov Ljubarskij
Praise and persuasion: argumentation and audience response in epideictic oratory	127	(10)
Ruth Webb
The role of vocabulary in Byzantine rhetoric as a stylistic device	137	(14)
Erich Trapp
Rhetoric, theory and the imperative of performance: Byzantium and now	151	(22)
Margaret Mullett
Section IV Rhetoric and historiography
George of Pisidia and the persuasive word: words, words, words ...	173	(14)
Mary Whitby
The rhetorical structures of Skylitzes' Synopsis Historian	187	(14)
Catherine Holmes
George Akropolites' rhetoric	201	(14)
Ruth Macrides
Section V Rhetoric and visual images
Byzantine rhetoric, Latin drama and the portrayal of the New Testament	215	(20)
Henry Maguire
`Living painting'	235	(20)
Robin Cormack
Text and picture in manuscripts: what's rhetoric got to do with it?	255	(18)
Leslie Brubaker
Index	273