Handbuch Antike Rhetorik

Bernhard Zimmermann

23Rhetorik und Drama – Rhetorik im Drama

Abstract: The Athenian dramatic genres of the 5th century BC are political forms par excellence, in the sense that they respond to contemporary problems and discourses in the polis, the city of Athens, at the time of performance with literary techniques appropriate to the norms of the genre in question. Sophistic rhetoric occupies a particularly significant position in these discussions. Various forms of legal and rhetorical speech are put onstage in the plays, with demonstrations of the devices they employ, their successes and failures, and their effect on society. The criticism of rhetoric in Tragedy and Comedy has to do in particular with the logos-theory developed by Gorgias and ...