The second book of Alciphron’s corpus, the Letters of farmers, offer an interesting example of the expansion and diffusion of some topoi peculiar to the Greek and Latin literary praise of the countryside. And yet Book 2 is also clearly based on the rhetorical exercise of ethopoeia, the exercise of fabricating speeches in the persona of a particular type of character. Moreover, it seems evident that these letters lets us see the further development of the imagined landscape of Classical Attica, drawing heavily on material from Attic Comedy (especially New Comedy) and other sources (traditions of rustic narrative inherited from Theocritus). And yet the two letters are also clearly based on the ethopoeia. Alciphron’s close relationship with school exercise and rhetorical training emphasizes the artificiality of the imaginary world of fiction and the stylized representations of the life. Once more we need a careful examination of the relationship between Alciphron and Comedy: the sophisticated intertextual strategies related in particular to the ‘grammar’ of the comic tradition, which the epistolographer has mastered, are grafted onto this foundation. It is significant that, besides the bucolic tradition, the focus on the urban environment and on its peripheral rural or marine environment is found also in comedy, especially New Comedy. The epistolographer’s interest is not in reproducing the events of comedy in miniature, but in working on the characters’ personalities in order to focus on the most significant traits that come to light from the writings to which he alludes.

Laus vitae rusticae: Conventionality, Imitation, Variation in the Letters of Alciphron

DRAGO, ANNA
2018-01-01

Abstract

The second book of Alciphron’s corpus, the Letters of farmers, offer an interesting example of the expansion and diffusion of some topoi peculiar to the Greek and Latin literary praise of the countryside. And yet Book 2 is also clearly based on the rhetorical exercise of ethopoeia, the exercise of fabricating speeches in the persona of a particular type of character. Moreover, it seems evident that these letters lets us see the further development of the imagined landscape of Classical Attica, drawing heavily on material from Attic Comedy (especially New Comedy) and other sources (traditions of rustic narrative inherited from Theocritus). And yet the two letters are also clearly based on the ethopoeia. Alciphron’s close relationship with school exercise and rhetorical training emphasizes the artificiality of the imaginary world of fiction and the stylized representations of the life. Once more we need a careful examination of the relationship between Alciphron and Comedy: the sophisticated intertextual strategies related in particular to the ‘grammar’ of the comic tradition, which the epistolographer has mastered, are grafted onto this foundation. It is significant that, besides the bucolic tradition, the focus on the urban environment and on its peripheral rural or marine environment is found also in comedy, especially New Comedy. The epistolographer’s interest is not in reproducing the events of comedy in miniature, but in working on the characters’ personalities in order to focus on the most significant traits that come to light from the writings to which he alludes.
2018
978-90-04-38335-7
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11586/184621
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