Persuasion, Rhetoric and Roman Poetry

Previous studies on the relationship between rhetorical theory and Roman poetry have generally taken the form of lists enumerating elements of style and arrangement that poets are said to have 'borrowed' from rhetorical critics. This book examines, and ultimately questions, this entrenched theoretical model and the very notion of rhetorical influence on which this paradigm is built. Tracing key moments in the poetic and the rhetorical traditions, in the context of which the problematic rela...