Author: Schwitter, Raphael
Title: Der tröstende Freund – Epistolares Rollenbild und kommunikative Verhaltensweise in Ciceros Epistulae ad familiares
Review/Collection: "Ciceroniana online", NS 1, 2
Year edition: 2017
Pages: 369-394
Keywords: Philosophie - Filosofia - Philosophy, Rhétorique - Retorica - Rhetorics
Description: Offering consolatory advice and comfort was a highly delicate task that potentially could threaten the precarious amicitia relationship between Roman aristocrats of the Late Republic. Especially in letters – the means of communication to which Cicero and his peers usually turned if personal conversation was impossible – consoling a friend was quite challenging. In order to avoid offending the often thin-skinned bereaved, the writer had to consider the mental and emotional condition of the addressee, and most importantly to pay respect to his social status. As the consolatory letters de morte preserved in Cicero’s Epistulae ad familiares show, epistolary consolation in late republican Rome was characterized by a specific communicative strategy based upon politeness and the conveyance of personal affection rather than on philosophical exhortation and rebuke, which traditionally dominate literary consolation in Greek and Roman Antiquity. [Abstract dal sito della rivista]
Works:
Link: https://doi.org/10.13135/2532-5353/2506
Author initials: Schwitter 2017
Title: Der tröstende Freund – Epistolares Rollenbild und kommunikative Verhaltensweise in Ciceros Epistulae ad familiares
Review/Collection: "Ciceroniana online", NS 1, 2
Year edition: 2017
Pages: 369-394
Keywords: Philosophie - Filosofia - Philosophy, Rhétorique - Retorica - Rhetorics
Description: Offering consolatory advice and comfort was a highly delicate task that potentially could threaten the precarious amicitia relationship between Roman aristocrats of the Late Republic. Especially in letters – the means of communication to which Cicero and his peers usually turned if personal conversation was impossible – consoling a friend was quite challenging. In order to avoid offending the often thin-skinned bereaved, the writer had to consider the mental and emotional condition of the addressee, and most importantly to pay respect to his social status. As the consolatory letters de morte preserved in Cicero’s Epistulae ad familiares show, epistolary consolation in late republican Rome was characterized by a specific communicative strategy based upon politeness and the conveyance of personal affection rather than on philosophical exhortation and rebuke, which traditionally dominate literary consolation in Greek and Roman Antiquity. [Abstract dal sito della rivista]
Works:
Link: https://doi.org/10.13135/2532-5353/2506
Author initials: Schwitter 2017
