Herodotean Narrative And Discourse
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Herodotean Narrative and Discourse
Mabel Lang offers a new interpretation of Herodotus. Her reading of the "Father of History" pinpoints the aspects of his style that clearly derive from oral composition. Lang examines oral techniques in storytelling, known from folktales and other oral literature as well as from Homer. She shows how the dramatic use of speeches--so characteristic of folk literature--played an important part in Herodotus' development of history out of the chronologies and geographies that he knew. Story form and speeches attributed to historical persons, she demonstrates, follow traditional formulas. She also studies in detail Herodotus' distinctive use of proverbs and rhetorical questions. Throughout, Lang draws on a variety of materials and offers particularly revealing comparisons of Homeric and Herodotean styles. This analysis of the evidence for oral composition in Herodotus' Histories opens a new perspective for students and scholars of Greek history.
Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus
In his extraordinary story of the defence of Greece against the Persian invasions of 490-480 BC, Herodotus sought to communicate not only what happened, but also the background of thoughts and perceptions that shaped those events and became critical to their interpretation afterwards. Much as the contemporary sophists strove to discover truth about the invisible, Herodotus was acutely concerned to uncover hidden human motivations, whose depiction was vital to his project of recounting and explaining the past. Emily Baragwanath explores the sophisticated narrative techniques with which Herodotus represented this most elusive variety of historical knowledge. Thus he was able to tell a lucid story of the past while nonetheless exposing the methodological and epistemological challenges it presented. Baragwanath illustrates and analyses a range of these techniques over the course of a wide selection of Herodotus' most intriguing narratives - from those on Athenian democracy and tyranny to Leonidas and Thermopylae - and thus supplies a method for reading the Histories more generally.
The Shape of Herodotean Rhetoric
In The Shape of Herodotean Rhetoric, Vasiliki Zali offers a fresh assessment of Herodotus’ rhetorical awareness. Redressing the usual view that considers Thucydides as a significant jump from earlier authors in the rhetorical tradition, Zali attempts to find a place for Herodotus. The volume explores the direct and indirect speeches in Herodotus’ fifth to ninth books, focusing in particular on the ways in which they highlight two major narrative themes: the fragility of Greek unity and the problematic Greco-Persian polarity. Through discussion of case studies and Herodotus’ literary background, Zali brings Herodotus’ sophisticated rhetorical system to life, examines the ways in which this system affects Herodotus’ authority, and demonstrates that Herodotus occupies a crucial place in the development of rhetoric.