Cicero's Speeches: The Critic in Action (Aris and Phillips Classical Texts) - Softcover

Stephen Usher

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0856688746 ISBN 13: 9780856688744

Publisher: Aris & Phillips Ltd, 2008

Cicero made a multiple bid for literary acclaim with his oratory and his writings on rhetoric, together with his works on politics, religion and philosophy. He was both orator, and critic and his efficiency in preserving written versions of his speeches have left us with an abundance of material for the comparison of theory with practice.In this book, Stephen Usher gives a detailed account of how Cicero viewed oratory, and what influenced the formation of his ideal. Cicero himself identifies eight desirable qualities and refinements that oratory should contain: literary knowledge and culture, knowledge and understanding of philosophy, knowledge of law, knowledge of history, wit and humour, emotional appeal, digression and dilatation. His assessment of both past and his contemporary orators exposes the intensity of the rivalry which underlies much of Cicero's rhetorical writing, and adds impetus to how he measures up to his own criteria. Usher sets each speech in its historical and forensic context, in chronological order, and examines to what extent and how successfully Cicero employs these definitions of great oratory.

About the Author:

Stephen Usher formerly Senior Lecturer in Classics at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College of the University of London has written extensively on oratory; his publications include The Historians of Greece and Rome and Dionysius of Halicarnassus Critical Essays. He has edited Greek Orators Volumes III and V and co-edited Greek Orators Volume I (with M. Edwards) in the Aris & Phillips Classical Texts series.

• Publisher: Aris & Phillips Ltd
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0856688746
• ISBN 13: 9780856688744
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 250