The artificer of discourse: Homeric speech and the origins of rhetoric

This dissertation examines the relationship between literary speech in the Homeric epics and ancient rhetoric as a theoretical and practical discipline. Since the inception of literary theory in the works of Plata and Aristotle, the realms of poetry and formal rhetoric have been treated as separate. My dissertation addresses this disconnect by contending that rhetoric---even in its delimited definition as speech employing specific, learned techniques of persuasion---arose out of poetry, specifically Homeric poetry. Based on a close analysis of persuasive speeches in the Iliad, I argue that Homeric epic displays a systematic and technical conception of rhetoric---a possibility acknowledged by several ancient critics, although neglected by modern scholars. Iliadic speeches, in fact, display specific techniques that closely resemble the theorized system found in Aristotle's Rhetoric, as I demonstrate in my central chapter. Recent scholarly accounts of the history of rhetoric (e.g. Kennedy, Cole, Schiappa, and Pernot) dismiss Homer's attention to the characterization of speech in his epics as "native eloquence" (Cole 1991:40). They identify the invention of rhetoric as occurring much later: in the fifth or fourth centuries B.C.E., when the practice of speech-making was first given the technical label rhetorike (in Plato's Gorgias) and instructive handbooks on the subject first appeared, a formalizing process that culminated in Aristotle's authoritative treatise in the mid-fourth century B.C.E. The discrepancy between a diverse but often overlooked collection of ancient sources that credit Homer as the first practitioner of rhetoric, and the modern dismissal of this idea, is the subject of Chapter 1 of my dissertation.;The central claim of my project---that a latent theory of rhetoric exists in Homer---is supported by textual data that I present and analyze in Chapter 2: direct speeches in the Iliad which are intended to persuade. These speeches bear the closest correspondence to the oratory of Aristotle's time, and to the narrowest usage of the word "rhetoric" in modern parlance. I do not include in my analysis speeches which solely consist of commands in the imperative, but rather those which bring some type of strategy to bear on the desired outcome, such as logical reasoning, shaming, flattery, or incentives, for example. Using the detailed categories of Aristotle's Rhetoric as a definitional framework, I have unearthed 45 "rhetorical" speeches in the Iliad. The range, complexity, and combination of persuasive techniques (including logical argumentation) employed by Iliadic speakers lead me to conclude that a rule-governed system of persuasion was understood and represented by the composer(s) of the Homeric epics.;Chapter 3 of the dissertation traces the "literary lineage" of rhetoric between Homer and Aristotle. It examines where else in Archaic Greek literature rhetorical sophistication comparable to Homer's is in evidence, and proposes the notion of a cultural transmission of rhetoric---that is, the example of represented persuasion in certain Archaic poetry (Homer above all) filtered down to and informed rhetorical theory in the Classical era. I have found that on the few occasions where complex rhetoric does occur in non-Homeric Archaic literature, it tends to be in works that bear an affinity to Homer in genre and/or in narrative content. Thus certain Homeric Hymns, and the military exhortation elegies of Callinus and Tyrtaeus, are the Archaic works that I found to most closely resemble Homeric speech in terms of rhetorical sophistication. It is these works that propagate rhetoric from Homer down through tragedy and certain sophistic works, and thence to the theories of Plato and Aristotle. Chapter 4 discusses Aristotle's treatment of Homeric material in the Rhetoric. Aristotle's failure to acknowledge Homeric roots for rhetoric can be explained, I argue, by larger trends in the Classical era towards locating authoritative discourse and technical knowledge in philosophical and scientific prose treatises, rather than in divinely-inspired poetic forms. Aristotle himself is the greatest ancient proponent and practitioner of separations between genres and disciplines, which I believe has contributed to the neglect, even in modern times, of the possibility that poetry can inform and embody rhetoric. Finally, in a coda to the dissertation, I explore one example of the potential implications of Aristotle's genre-compartmentalization with regard to rhetoric and poetry: direct speech Apollonius' Argonautica , a work that provides the most obvious post-Aristotelian counterpart to Homer. In the Argonautica, the quantity and quality of rhetorical speeches are dramatically reduced from their Homeric levels---a phenomenon due in part, I argue, to Aristotle's delimitation of rhetoric within the boundaries of theoretical and oratorical prose.