When the ancient Greeks first start writing mimetic prose narrative, where do they get the narrative resources for that? In particular, I’m interested in the verbal and stylistic resources for depicting rapid-fire dialogue and complex, unstructured speech situations involving multiple speakers. [*] [1]… Read more
Introduction By employing recent work done in the discipline of Pragmatics (Historical Pragmatics; (Im)politeness studies), this paper aims to sketch out a typology and a description of the dynamics of verbal abuse in Homer. [*] The metalanguage of verbal abuse, that is, how the narrator… Read more
πεφύκασι δ’ οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν φιλοσόφων τῶν κωμικῶν κακήγοροι μᾶλλον εἶναι. Most philosophers are naturally more disposed to slander than the comic playwrights. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 5.220a The subject of this paper is the rhetorical strategies of abuse that Socrates employs in the Apology and Meno, strategies ubiquitous in Plato’s writings… Read more
