Rhetoric And Historiography In Late Antiquity eBook

This volume studies the interactions between rhetoric and historiography in Late Antiquity. Starting out from the fact that historians used rhetorical ways of writing whereas orators relied on historical material, it examines how late antique orators and historians explored, transgressed and policed generic boundaries. By combining a socio-literary and a metaliterary approach, the volume charts how practitioners of each genre situated themselves vis-a-vis the other and how such metadiscourses on the relationship between rhetoric and historiography were deployed in view of claims of authority, truthfulness, and superiority. Including papers on Greek, Latin and Syriac, the volume seeks to demonstrate how in all these three languages orators and historiographers show a high degree of self-awareness and position themselves consciously within a crowded literary field.