The rhetorical exercises of Nikephoros Basilakes : "progymnasmata" from twelfth-century Byzantium / edited and translated by Jeffrey Beneker and Craig A. Gibson

• Superior document: Dumbarton Oaks medieval library 43
• VerfasserIn: Nicephorus Basilaces 1115-1180
• HerausgeberIn: Beneker, Jeffrey; Gibson, Craig A. 1968-
• ÜbersetzerIn: Beneker, Jeffrey; Gibson, Craig A. 1968-
• Place / Publishing House: Cambridge, Massachusetts, London : Harvard University Press, 2016
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English; Ancient Greek
• Series: Dumbarton Oaks medieval library 43
• Classification: 18.43 - Byzantinische Sprache und Literatur; 17.97 - Texte eines einzelnen Autors
• Physical Description: xxii, 394 Seiten
• Notes: Literaturverziechnis: Seite 387-388

Progymnasmata are literally "exercises" that are "preliminary" to declamation, which is the composition and delivery of ostensibly impromptu speeches in the guise of fictional, mythical, or historical characters who serve as prosecution or defense in fictitious trial scenarios. Basilakes's collection includes highly polished examples of fable, narration, maxim, refutation, confirmation, encomium, and ethopoeia. Basilakes's exercises draw on myth, ancient history, the Bible, and other Christian texts, and they use specific words and phrases from ancient Greek epic, tragedy, historiography, and other genres. The progymnasmata also feature mythological and biblical stories that Basilakes treats more than once, the most obvious example being his handling of the myth of Atalanta as both a refutation and a confirmation. In other cases, however, he revisits stories so as to highlight different perspectives, changes in disposition, and moral dilemmas....