Aither is a double-blind peer review, Open Access online academic journal. It is indexed at ERIH+ and Scopus. It is published by the Faculty of Arts of the Palackı University in Olomouc in cooperation with the Philosophical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. It comes out twice a year. Every second issue is international and contains foreign-language articles (mainly in English, but also in German and French). The journal is registered under the number ISSN 1803-7860.

Aither 12/2014 (International issue no. 3):6-21 | DOI: 10.5507/aither.2014.015

Oratorical Stylistics according to Hermogenes of Tarsus

Apostolos N. Stavelas
Academy of Athens, Research Centre for Greek Philosophy

Hermogenes of Tarsus (2nd century A.D.) is considered to be one of the most prominent figures of the theory of rhetoric, because of the categories, types or canons of literary style he introduced in the literary critique of oratorical texts. In the third book of his treatise On the Art of Rhetoric, bearing the title On the Ideas, he reconstructed the threefold arrangement of oratorical style (high, middle, low) developed previously during the Roman era. The seven-fold clarification of style he introduced directly engaged his theory to the philosophy of the Neo-Platonists. The types of oratorical style he proposed could be regarded as aesthetic functions, since they suggest both the function of processing thoughts, namely the significata concealed within the reason, and the meta-linguistic function, in the sense of reasoned speech employed in commenting on speech acts. In this sense, On the Ideas is a study not of the oratorical style -something equivalent to a survey on personal patterns of modifying the oratorical language, a subject formulated by the preceding rhetoricians under the title Peri Characteron - but a survey of oratorical stylistics, namely, a study of the systematic relations and strategies of oratorical deliverance.

Published: September 30, 2014  Show citation

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Stavelas, A.N. (2014). Oratorical Stylistics according to Hermogenes of Tarsus. Aither, 6(12), 6-21. doi: 10.5507/aither.2014.015
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