Powers of Expression, Expressions of Power : Speech Presentation and Latin Literature

Can a speaker's words ever be faithfully reported? This discussion of Latin literature offers an original contribution to current debates about discourse and representation. Ancient texts are discussed in conjunction with examples from modern literature to highlight what happens when speech itself becomes the subject of a story.

Can a speaker''s words ever be faithfully reported? History, philosophy, ethnography, political theory, linguistics, and literary criticism all involve debates about discourse and representation. By drawing from Plato''s theory of discourse, the lively analysis of speech presentation in this book provides a coherent and original contribution to these debates, and highlights the problems involved when speech becomes both the object and the medium of narrative representation. The opening chapters offer fresh insights on ideology, intertextuality, literary language, and historiography, and reveal important connections between them. These insights are then applied in specific critical treatments of - Virgil''s Aeneid, of Petronius'' Satyricon, and of scenes involving messengers and angels in classical and European epic. Throughout this study, ancient texts are discussed in conjunction with examples from later traditions. Overall, this book uses Latin literature to demonstrate the theoretical and ideological importance of speech presentation for a number of contemporary disciplines.