Abstract
Epideictic rhetoric has been traditionally stigmatized as fl attery or empty show without any practical goal. Where does such attitude towards epideictic come from? To answer this question, we explore the ancient debate about the nature and the function of the epideictic genre. In the second part of this paper, we discuss the recent reappraisal of the epideictic among classical scholars and fi nally focus the attention on a promising fi eld of research: epideictic speeches in honor of women.
Highlights
In the first book of Rhetoric Aristotle introduces his well-known division of rhetoric into three genres: deliberative, judicial and epideictic (Rhetoric 1.1358a 36-b8)
What about the epideictic genre? In modern languages, the expression “epideictic rhetoric” corresponds to a plurality of terms: for example, in English, we have “praise,” “eulogy,” “encomium,” and “panegyric”, “demonstrative” and “ceremonial” (Pernot 2015, 8). These variations in vocabulary are the first sign of a certain confusion that surrounds the nature of epideictic, its boundaries and its function
In imperial Technai epideictic is usually mentioned in passing, in connection with encomiastic passages included in speeches of the other two genres18
Summary
In the first book of Rhetoric Aristotle introduces his well-known division of rhetoric into three genres: deliberative, judicial and epideictic (Rhetoric 1.1358a 36-b8). The expression “epideictic rhetoric” corresponds to a plurality of terms: for example, in English, we have “praise,” “eulogy,” “encomium,” and “panegyric”, “demonstrative” and “ceremonial” (Pernot 2015, 8). These variations in vocabulary are the first sign of a certain confusion that surrounds the nature of epideictic, its boundaries and its function. A widespread belief has relegated the epideictic to a position of marginality (Walker 2000, 7) In his important book entitled An Introduction to Aristotle’s Rhetoric, with Analysis Notes and Appendices and published in 1867, E.M. Cope describes epideictic as “inferior” to judicial and deliberative rhetoric because it is “demonstrative, showy, ostentatious, declamatory” and with “no practical purposes in view” (Cope [1867], 1970, 121-122). Modern attitudes of uncertainty and disregard toward epideictic, as we shall see, find their roots in Antiquity
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