1st Edition

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

Edited By Elizabeth Jeffreys Copyright 2003
294 Pages
by Routledge

294 Pages
by Routledge

'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... Read more
Contents: Introduction, Elizabeth Jeffreys; The uses of rhetoric: Rhetoric and writing strategies in the 9th century, Martha Vinson; The rhetoric of Kekaumenos, Charlotte Roueché; Teachers and students of rhetoric in the late Byzantine period, C.N. Constantinides; Byzantine imperial panegyric as advice literature (1204-ca. 1350), Dimiter Angelov, Public uses of rhetoric: Court poetry: questions of motifs, structure and function, Wolfram Hörandner; 'Rhetorical' texts, Michael Jeffreys; Dramatic device or didactic tool? The function of dialogue in Byzantine preaching, Mary Cunningham; Literature and rhetoric: How should a Byzantine text be read?, Jakov Ljubarskij; Praise and persuasion: argumentation and audience response in epideictic oratory, Ruth Webb; The role of vocabulary in Byzantine rhetoric as a stylistic device, Erich Trapp; Rhetoric, theory and the imperative of performance: Byzantium and now, Margaret Mullett; Rhetoric and historiography: George of Pisidia and the persuasive word: words, words, words, ... , Mary Whitby; The rhetorical structures of Skylitzes' Synopsis Historion, Catherine Holmes; George Akropolites' rhetoric, Ruth Macrides; Rhetoric and visual images: Byzantine rhetoric, Latin drama and the portrayal of the New Testament, Henry Maguire; 'Living painting', Robin Cormack; Text and picture in manuscripts: what's rhetoric got to do with it?, Leslie Brubaker; Index.

Biography

Elizabeth Jeffreys is Bywater and Sotheby Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature and Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford University, UK

'... a valuable addition to this inadequately represented area of scholarship. It suggests that it was a very stimulating symposium.' Parergon