Browse our books below. You can also search for books.
FREDAL, J., Rhetorical Action in Ancient Athens. Persuasive Artistry from Solon to Demosthenes. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, 2006. IX,249p. Original blue cloth with dust wrps. Nice copy. 'Rhetorical Action in Ancient Athens'is an attempt to re-evaluate key aspects of public oratory in the best-documented polis of the ancient Greek world. 'Action' is here the key word: Fredal wants to shift the emphasis from what he call 'enthymematic rhetoric', i.e. 'that intricate species of discourse that attended to the course of thoughts in the listener' (p.33), to rhetoricas performance, icluding all the symbolic, bodily and topographical features that endowed rhetoric with meaning. (...) In this theoretically informed study, F. offers us refreshing insights into the nature of Athenian rhetoric. He is at his best when he discusses features of oratorical performance that students of Athenian history and literature rarelky think about: the importance of spatial and architectural features in the performance of rhetoric, for ecxample, and the bodily hallmarks of the successful 'rhêtor', often related to social class and acquired through a proces of enculturation. This is a book that will be profitably read not only by scholars of rhetoric but also by specialists in Athenian literature, history and law.' (ZINON PAPAKONSTANTINOU, in The Classical Review, 2007, pp.271-73). € 65.00 (Antiquarian) ISBN: 9780809325948