The Brill International Studies in the History of Rhetoric 19: The Narrative Setting of Historiographical Speeches

The “narrative settings” are one of the most important yet least studied aspects of Classical historiography. Greek and Romans historians resorted systematically to this device to embed speeches and harmonize them with the narration in their works. The speech’s setting allowed a historian to comment on its content, script its delivery, and condition the reader’s response—all while providing fertile ground for intertextuality and allusion. The chapters reunited in this volume track its origin and evolution from Thucydides to the medieval and early modern historiography of the Iberian world. As a result, the book illuminates the functions, structure, and unwritten rules of one of the most powerful and enduring, if elusive, devices of the European historiographical tradition.