Nancy Worman

Abusive Mouths in Classical Athens

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

This study of the language of insult charts abuse in classical Athenian literature that centres on the mouth and its appetites, especially talking, eating, drinking, and sexual activities. Attic comedy, Platonic dialogue, and fourth-century oratory often deploy insulting depictions of the mouth and its excesses in order to deride professional speakers as sophists, demagogues, and women. Although the patterns of imagery explored are very prominent in ancient invective and later western literary traditions, this is the first book to discuss this phenomenon in classical literature. It responds to a growing interest in both abusive speech genres and the representation of the body, illuminating an iambic discourse that isolates the intemperate mouth as a visible emblem of behaviours ridiculed in the democratic arenas of classical Athens.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Seitenzahl: 398
• Erscheinungstermin: 25. November 2010
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 152mm x 21mm
• Gewicht: 575g
• ISBN-13: 9780521182560
• ISBN-10: 0521182565
• Artikelnr.: 32732803

Autorenporträt

Nancy Worman is Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at Barnard College and Columbia University, New York, USA. She is the author of articles and books on style, performance, and the body in Greek literature and culture. Her most recent book is Landscape and the Spaces of Metaphor in Ancient Literary Theory and Criticism (2015).

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction
1. The mouth and its uses in Homer, iambos, and tragedy
2. Open mouths and abusive talk in Aristophanes
3. Gluttonous speechifying in Euripides' Cyclops
4. Crude talk and fancy fare in Plato
5. Defamation and oral excess in Demosthenes and Aeschines
6. The intemperate mouth in Aristotle and Theophrastus
Epilogue.