Bibliography
| Title: Dio Chrysostom Secondary Title: Narrators, Narratees, and Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature Volume: 1 Pages: 451-64 Type: Book Section Year: 2004 Abstract: Whitmarsh argues that Dio’s orations were rich and multi-layered compositions, whose rhetorical sophistication served to support Dio’s moralizing agenda, which includes a desire to have his primary audience think critically about their own relationship to the speaker, which is to say, about their own moral instruction. In this regard, Whitmarsh finds fault with prevailing scholarly opinion that, in his view, places too much confidence in Philostratus’ awkward classification of the Prusan statesman as a kind of philosopher-sophist (VS 479, 492).
For Whitmarsh, Dio’s ethical concerns, based on both Stoic and Cynic philosophy, come across quite well in his Bithynian, Diogenes, and Kingship speeches and are further refined by a mastery of narratological technique. “Metapedagogy” is the term Whitmarsh applies to Dio’s ability to have his primary audience interpret his instructional role as orator in light of the moral exempla portrayed in his narratives.
Dio’s rhetorical artistry is principally accomplished through the use of the dialogue and the mythological/historical parable, two structural elements which more often than not meld quite comfortably into an overarching narrative context. Whitmarsh is clear that while the “dialogue” as an oratorical component cannot be considered “narrative” in the narrow sense of the term, it nevertheless can be seen as narrative in the larger context of Dio’s oratory, the success of which is based upon the assignment of “narrator” and “narratee” roles throughout the course of his speeches. In the case of the Nestor (LVII), the complexity can potentially reach four unique levels of narration, if, as the speech seems to suggest, the intended audience of one of his Kingship Orations (I-IV) was to be his fellow Greek aristocrats, and not, as is currently believed, Trajan himself.
Whitmarsh clarifies his arguments by looking at Dio’s manipulation of the Classical Greek dichotomy of “utility” and “pleasure”. In the Libyan Myth (V), for example, Dio is able to add usefulness to a myth that has hitherto been merely a source of pleasure. Consequently, he is able to set off his own concern for moral edification by ironically juxtaposing the pleasure of his lustful protagonists with the pleasure of his audience, who might take too much pleasure in his captivating narrative style. Keywords: dio, philsophy, literary, rhetorical, pleasure, utility, audience, narrative |