The Art of Persuasion across Genres and Times - 27-28-29/08/2015, Nicosia (Cyprus)
Most people think of persuasion in antiquity only in the context of the law-court, where two litigants present their arguments in an attempt to persuade the judges. In reality, however, persuasion was employed in antiquity across many genres and this very generic flexibility makes the forms of persuasion an inherently interesting subject for inquiry for scholars of ancient literature. Since antiquity the art of rhetorical persuasion has also been employed in public speaking. Rhetoric is central to political processes and outcomes: it gives the speakers the power to influence their audience to achieve their political aims. Although what we know today as the art of public speaking has undergone continuous change since the days of Pericles, Demosthenes, Cicero, and Quintilian, nevertheless, it has been suggested that Greco-Roman rhetoric has influenced how contemporary politics is articulated. This three-day conference seeks, therefore, to explore the generic conventions, principles, techniques, and results of persuasion in Greco-Roman oratory and historiography and in contemporary political discourse.
FECHA/DATE/DATA: 27-28-29/08/2015
LUGAR/LOCATION/LUOGO: University of Cyprus (Nicosia, Cyprus)
ORGANIZADOR/ORGANIZER/ORGANIZZATORE: Department of Social and Political Sciences (University of Cyprus)
INFO: web
INSCRIPCIÓN/REGISTRATION/REGISTRAZIONE: Gratis / free / gratis - Formulario online / Online registration form / modulo di registrazione online
PROGRAMA/PROGRAM/PROGRAMMA:
Thursday 27/08/2015
08:30-09:45 Registration/ Tea & coffee
09:45 Welcome: Constantinos Christofides (Rector of the University of Cyprus)
09:55 Welcome: Kyriakos Demetriou (Department of Social and Political Science, University of Cyprus)
10:05 Welcome: Antonis Tsakmakis (Department of Classics and Philosophy, University of Cyprus)
10:15 Welcome by the organizers: Sophia Papaioannou (University of Athens) & Andreas Serafim (University of Cyprus/ Open University of Cyprus)
10:30 -12:30 Session 1 - Persuasion across times
Chair: Jon Hesk (St Andrews)
10:30-11:00 Christopher Carey (UCL): In praise of the dead: the epitaphios logos ancient and modern
11:00-11:30 Adele Scafuro (Brown): The rhetoric of impeachment: trials in England, the United States, and ancient Greece
11:30-12:00 Brenda Griffith-Williams (UCL): “We’re all in this together”: the art of (un)communication in political discourse
12:00-12:30 Andreas Hetzel (Fatih/ Magdeburg): Persuasive language beyond giving reasons: from Gorgias to Jane Austen
12:30-13:30 Lunch
13:30-16:00 Session 2 - Persuasion in Historiography
Chair: Adele Scafuro (Brown University)
13:30-14:00 Tazuko Angela van Berkel (Leiden): Pericles’ rhetoric of numbers
14:00-14:30 Roger Brock (Leeds): Public and private persuasion in the historical works of Xenophon
14:30-15:00 Antonis Tsakmakis (Cyprus): Thucydides and Mytilene’s revolt: rhetoric and beyond
15:00-15:30 Maria Kythreotou (Cyprus): Persuasion in Thucydidean speeches
15:30-16:00 Jessica Evans (Middlebury): Sophistic effeminacy and Athenian manhood: gendered truths and patriotism in Thucydides' History and Plato's Gorgias
16:00-16:30 Tea & coffee break
16:30-18:30 Session 3 - Persuasion across boundaries: Oratory and Historiography
Chair: Michael Gagarin (Austin)
16:30-17:00 Stephen Todd (Manchester): Greek historians and the language of rhetorical proof
17:00-17:30 Jon Hesk (St Andrews): Thucydides and Xenophon on deliberative pathologies and the contingency of rhetorical situations
17:30-18:00 Rebecca Van Hove (KCL): Oracles as tools of persuasion and sources of authority in Herodotus and Attic Oratory
18:00-18:30 Robert Sing (Cambridge): Assessing Financial Power in War in Thucydides and Demosthenes
18:30 End of panel
18:45-20:00 Keynote lecture
Chair: Antonis Tsakmakis (Cyprus)
Michael Gagarin (Austin): The Greek art of persuasion and its influence
20:00 End of panel
20:30 Dinner at a local restaurant
Friday 28/08/2015
09:00-09:30 Tea & coffee
09:30-11:00 Session 4 - The language, style and performativity of persuasion I
Chair: Christopher Carey (UCL)
09:30-10:00 T. Davina McClain (Northwestern State University): Women Speak: Direct Speech in Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita
10:00-10:30 Andreas Serafim (Cyprus/ OU Cyprus): Persuasive conventions: imperative and questions in Attic oratory
10:30-11:00 Tzu-I Liao (UCL): Rhetoric on the border: De Corona as both judicial and deliberative speech
11:00-11:30 Tea & coffee
11:30-13:00 Session 5 - The language, style and performativity of persuasion II
Chair: Roger Brock (University of Leeds)
11:30-12:00 Eleni Volonaki (Peloponnese): Narrative persuasion in forensic oratory
12:00-12:30 Flaminia Beneventano (Siena): Apophainein. Demonstration and performance between forensic oratory and Herodotus’ Histories
12:30-13:00 Alessandro Vatri (Oxford): Poetry in the Attic lawcourt: how to (re)cite it, and how to recognize it
13:00-14:00 Lunch
14:00-16:00 Session 6 - Emotional persuasion
Chair: Sophia Papaioannou (Athens)
14:00-14:30 Ricardo Gancz & Gabriel Danzig (Bar Ilan University): Arousing the emotions by speech: an Aristotelian theory
14:30-15:00 Dimos Spatharas (Crete): Enargeia and emotions in the Attic orators
15:00-15:30 Jennifer Devereaux (Southern California University): Embodied metaphor and the rhetoric of emotion in Greek and Latin Prose
15:30-16:00 Sophia Xenophontos (Glasgow): The art of persuasion in Galen’s medical and ethical writings
16:00-16:30 Tea & coffee
16:30-19:00 Session 7 - Persuasion in Roman rhetoric and historiography
Chair: Michael Paschalis (Crete)
16:30-17:00 Thierry Hirsch (Oxford): “Rectumne fuerit ab Oreste matrem occidi”. Examples in the two oldest extant Roman treatises on rhetoric
17:00-17:30 Jakob Wisse (Newcastle): Left to one’s own deliberative devices: orators, historians, and rhetorical theory
17:30-18:00 Victoria Pagan (Florida): Dialogus de Principibus? Tacitus on the art of persuasion in the Julio-Claudian era
18:00-18:30 Benoit Sans (Brussels): Battle Speeches and Narrative Strategies in Ancient Historiography
18:30-19:00 Georgios Vassiliades (Paris IV-Sorbonne): The debate on the lex Oppia in Livy: juxtaposing two failed strategies for persuasion
19:00 End of panel
20:00 Dinner in the hotel
Saturday 29/08/2014
09:00-09:30 Tea & coffee
09:30-11:00 Session 8 - Persuasion across genres: literature I
Chair: Judith Mossman (Nottingham)
09:30-10:00 Costas Apostolakis (Crete): The rhetoric of Athenian imperialism through genres: some aspects in fifth century literature
10:00-10:30 Antonis Petrides (OU Cyprus): λελάληκεν ἡδέως ἐν τῷ βίῳ οὐδενί: Knemon’s apologia pro vita sua in Menander’s Dyskolos
10:30-11:00 Francesca Scrofani (EHESS/ Università degli Studi di Trento): Bodily language of persuasion in Euripides’ Medea
11:00-11:30 Tea & coffee
11:30-13:00 Session 9 - Persuasion across genres: literature II
Chair: Kathryn Tempest (Roehampton)
11:30-12:00 Andreas Michalopoulos (Athens): The art of persuasion in Seneca’s Agamemnon: the debate between Clytemnestra and her nurse
12:00-12:30 Michael Paschalis (Crete): The Art of Ruling an Empire: Persuasion at Point Zero
12:30-13:00 Sophia Papaioannou (Athens): The Poetics and Politics of Persuasion in Ovid’s and Quintus’ Reconstructions of the Hoplon Krisis
13:00-14:00 Lunch
14:00-16:00 Session 10 - Persuasion across genres: prose
Chair: Stephanos Efthymiades (OU Cyprus)
14:00-14:30 Judith Mossman (Nottingham): A ghostly presence: the strange absence of persuasion from Plutarch’s Cimon
14:30-15:00 Kathryn Tempest (Roehampton): The Pseudepigrapha of M. Junius Brutus: Persuading whom, when, how and why?
15:00-15:30 Margot Neger (Salzburg): Pliny’s Letters and the art of persuasion
15:30 End of panel
15:30-16:00 Closing remarks
Sophia Papaioannou (Athens) & Andreas Serafim (Cyprus/ OU Cyprus)
16:00 End of the conference