The Rhetoric of Seeing in Attic Forensic Oratory / / Peter A. O'Connell.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Texas Press Complete eBook-Package 2017
• VerfasserIn: O'Connell, Peter A.,
• Place / Publishing House: Austin : : University of Texas Press, , [2021]; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource
• Other title: Frontmatter --; Contents --; Abbreviations of Ancient Authors --; Abbreviations of Modern Editions --; Note on Translations and the Spelling of Greek Names --; Acknowledgments --; Introduction: Vision and performance in the courts of classical Athens --; PART ONE: PHYSICAL SIGHT --; 1. Visual Rhetoric and Visual Evidence --; 2. The Meanings of Movement --; PART TWO: THE LANGUAGE OF DEMONSTRATION AND VISIBILITY --; 3. Showing and Seeing : The Procedural Terminology of Witnessing --; 4. Saying as Showing, Hearing as Seeing --; PART THREE: IMAGINARY SIGHT --; 5. Visualizing Civic Suffering --; 6. Shared Spectatorship. Bridging the Gap between Past and Present and Here and There --; Conclusion --; Appendix of Speeches --; Notes --; Bibliography --; Index of Ancient Texts --; General Index
• Format: Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
• ISBN: 9781477311691; 9783110745313
• DOI: 10.7560/311684
• Access: restricted access
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: Peter A. O'Connell.

In ancient Athenian courts of law, litigants presented their cases before juries of several hundred citizens. Their speeches effectively constituted performances that used the speakers’ appearances, gestures, tones of voice, and emotional appeals as much as their words to persuade the jury. Today, all that remains of Attic forensic speeches from the fifth and fourth centuries BCE are written texts, but, as Peter A. O’Connell convincingly demonstrates in this innovative book, a careful study of the speeches’ rhetoric of seeing can bring their performative aspect to life. Offering new interpretations of a wide range of Athenian forensic speeches, including detailed discussions of Demosthenes’ On the False Embassy, Aeschines’ Against Ktesiphon, and Lysias’ Against Andocides, O’Connell shows how litigants turned the jurors’ scrutiny to their advantage by manipulating their sense of sight. He analyzes how the litigants’ words work together with their movements and physical appearance, how they exploit the Athenian preference for visual evidence through the language of seeing and showing, and how they plant images in their jurors’ minds. These findings, which draw on ancient rhetorical theories about performance, seeing, and knowledge as well as modern legal discourse analysis, deepen our understanding of Athenian notions of visuality. They also uncover parallels among forensic, medical, sophistic, and historiographic discourses that reflect a shared concern with how listeners come to know what they have not seen.