Tours et détours de la parole dans la littérature antique

The studies collected in this volume are concerned with multiple ancient Greek and Latin authors and various literary genres, from archaic Greek epic to Latin legal texts, yet they all share as a common denominator the exploration of discursive strategies operating in a given communicative situation, and the investigation of the many ways to manipulate others by speech, in terms both of internal communication between the represented characters and of external communication between the author and his public. Like a “developer” in the photographic sense of the term, the figure of the gap turns out to be especially revealing in this field of analysis: it is by considering discrepancies from and transgressions against the rules of what might be termed “conventional” or “fluid” communication (to borrow, on an indicative basis, a keyword from H.P. Grice’s famous theory) that the speaker’s intentions are most clearly detected. From Homer to Roman lawyers, this volume provides an overview of the twists and turns by which speech could act on others.