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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Self-portrait of an Orator as a Poet : images and Poetic references in Aelius Aristides' work

subject

description

Aelius Aristides is one of the major representatives of the Second Sophistic : his speeches are exemplary of the development of epidictic rhetoric in the imperial period. Everything in his work, including what he himself says on the subject, gives the image of an orator devoted body and soul to rhetoric and confident in the powers of prose. This is also the portrait that most studies since the 19th century have confirmed.However, poetry plays an important role in Aristide's speeches : they contain many poetic images and references. Moreover, Aristide writes poems and gives us fragments of them. He does not hesitate to refer to his own verses in speeches from both the beginning and the end of his career. In recent years, research has focused on the poetic facts in the speeches. These include vocabulary, rhythms, poetic figures and quotations. The portrait of the champion of rhetoric has been refined : the importance of poetry in his work has been noticed, as well as his quest for a singular authorial voice, especially in the Sacred Tales.In keeping with all these researches, the present work aims at sheding light on the place, role and stakes of poetry in Aristides’ work, by exploiting in particular the images and poetic references.In a first section, we establish how Aristides uses poetry to sketch out his self-portrait as an ideal orator : he challenges the poets on the grounds of truth, technique and inspiration. He distrusts as well asianism, an oratorical style that can be seen as a rhetorical legacy of poetry. We also show that the very existence of Aristides’ poetry qualifies this portrait : far form being a minor activity, it has a significant place in his carreer and his work. The resolution of this paradox requires a study of the poetic material at work in the discourses. We make an inventory of the images and textual references in the corpus and provide reference tables for each poet in the appendix.In a second section, we consider the various functions of images and references in the discourses, depending on whether Aristides is a polemist, an adviser, an encomiast or a hymn writer. We show that textual references go beyond the functions of argument and ornament to participate in the commentary of his own rhetoric and contribute to refine Aristides’ portrait.In a third and final section, we establish how images and textual references reveal the poetic models that should be followed or rejected. By embodying poetic or literary figures, Aristides sketches a self-portrait as an orator in the form of a poet, and in so doing inflects the definition of his own oratory.