Ancient rhetoric as a hermeneutical tool for the analysis of characterization in narrative literature

This article argues that the conceptualization of the notions of character and characterization in ancient rhetorical treatises can serve as a hermeneutical tool for the analysis of characterization in narrative literature. It offers an analysis of ancient rhetorical loci and techniques of character depiction and points out that ancient rhetorical theory discusses direct, metaphorical, and metonymical techniques of characterization. Ultimately, it provides the modern scholar with a paradigm for the analysis of characterization in (ancient) narrative literature

Where philosophy and rhetoric meet : character typification in the Greek novel

Typification plays a major role in characterisation in ancient literature. This paper focuses on the eight character types that the Greek novelistic corpus has in common with Aristotle’s ethical philosophical works on virtue and vice (Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, and Magna Moralia) and Theophrastus’ Characters: the coward (deilos), the flatterer (kolax), the obsequious man (areskos), the hypocrite (eirōn), the boaster (alazōn), the insensitive man (anaisthētos), the rustic (agroikos), and the shameless man (anaischyntos). I set out to answer three questions: (1) Can we discern Theophrastan and/or Aristotelian echoes in the novelists’ engagement with these character types, and if so: (2) Do they allow us to postulate any direct influence? I will try to answer both questions by adding a third question: (3) In which thematic areas do these eight character types appear? I argue that, despite its heterogeneity, the novelists’ engagement with character typification tends to cluster around three specific semantic areas. In military, erotic, and social contexts, echoes of Aristotelian and/or Theophrastan ideas connected with the various character types appear frequently, and their original meaning is often adapted or displaced. Rather than postulating any direct influence, however, I argue that the character types, along with some intrinsically connected concepts, had become part of general rhetorical education by the first centuries B.C. In my view, the novelists’ use of these character types is an aspect of their engagement with the literary toolkit developed in rhetorical education