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E-book
Author Worman, Nancy, 1963- author.

Title Abusive mouths in classical Athens / Nancy Worman
Published Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2008

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Description 1 online resource (xi, 385 pages)
Contents Introduction -- The mouth and its abuses in epic, lyric, and tragedy -- Open mouths and abusive talk in Aristophanes -- Gluttonous speechifying in Euripides' Cyclops -- Crude talk and fancy fare in Plato -- Defamation and oral excesses in Aeschines and Demosthenes -- The intemperate mouth in Aristotle and Theophrastus -- Epilogue
Summary 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
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 325-345) and indexes
Notes Print version record
Subject Invective -- Greece -- Athens
Invective in literature.
Greek literature -- History and criticism
Rhetoric, Ancient.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- Ancient & Classical.
Greek literature.
Intellectual life.
Invective.
Invective in literature.
Rhetoric, Ancient.
SUBJECT Athens (Greece) -- Intellectual life
Subject Greece -- Athens.
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780511393488
0511393482
0511394241
9780511394249
9780511392177
0511392176
9780511394898
0511394896
9780511482434
0511482434