Acting with Words: Communication, Rhetorical Performance and Performative Acts in Latin Literature

In recent years, literary theorists have devoted much attention to the ways in which narrative texts represent speech acts. But modern critics usually devote little space to the practice and technique of ancient authors. This volume brings together a series of essays illustrating different aspects of the study of representations of speech in narrative texts in a number of different genres. Approaching ancient texts in ways which intersect with a number of areas in which much research has been done in recent years, this collection makes it possible to look anew at the ways in which speech representation interacts with and plays an important role in constructions of power and authority in literary texts, the relationship between literature and political and broader cultural ideologies, and the connections between speech acts and intertextuality. It includes essays by Alexander Arweiler, Valéry Berlincourt, Therese Fuhrer, Lavinia Galli-Milic, Christina Kraus, Roland Mayer, Melanie Möller, Damien Nelis, Loreto Nunez, and Thomas Schirren.