Rhetoric, identity and ideology in the Athenian law-court
This thesis examines the ways in which litigants represent themselves (or are represented) to the jury in fourth century Athens. The law-court proved an ideal arena for public self-fashioning. Legalism was virtually unknown in Athenian society. Instead, public <I>persona</I> became one of the crucial issues for the court. It was regarded as one of the safeguards of democratic society that no one should be above the scrutiny of his citizen peers. The speeches are gambits aimed at defining the limits of the acceptable and the unacceptable in Athenian public culture. This thesis examines the Athenian male not from the perspective of prescriptive definition, but through performance. Traditionally, the law-court speeches have been regarded as mines for hard facts on law and politics. Even scholars interested in the social values contained in the speeches have tended to seize upon quotations indiscriminately, and take them out of context as unproblematic statements of public attitudes. In contrast, my study shows that such an approach runs the risk of losing much of the complexity of these speeches. Instead, I have attempted to analyse the speeches as complete 'literary artifacts'. The thesis places the values of
Blanshard, A. J. L.
Rhetoric, identity and ideology in the Athenian law-court. This thesis examines the ways in which litigants represent themselves (or are represented) to the jury in fourth century Athens. The law-court proved an ideal arena for public self-fashioning. Legalism was virtually unknown in Athenian society. Instead, public <I>persona</I> became one of the crucial issues for the court. It was regarded as one of the safeguards of democratic society that no one should be above the scrutiny of his citizen peers. The speeches are gambits aimed at defining the limits of the acceptable and the unacceptable in Athenian public culture. This thesis examines the Athenian male not from the perspective of prescriptive definition, but through performance. Traditionally, the law-court speeches have been regarded as mines for hard facts on law and politics. Even scholars interested in the social values contained in the speeches have tended to seize upon quotations indiscriminately, and take them out of context as unproblematic statements of public attitudes. In contrast, my study shows that such an approach runs the risk of losing much of the complexity of these speeches. Instead, I have attempted to analyse the speeches as complete 'literary artifacts'. The thesis places the values of
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