A01=Maud W. Gleason
Ad hominem
ADAPT
Aeschylus
Anecdote
Antinous
Antithesis
Approbation
Asceticism
Author_Maud W. Gleason
Bribery
Category=J
Category=NHC
Category=NHD
Classicism
Cowardice
Declamation
Defamation
Demonax
Dio Chrysostom
Distrust
Effeminacy
Epigram
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Erudition
Etymology
Eunuch
Excursus
Favorinus
Gluttony
Greek love
Hedonism
Homosexuality in ancient Rome
Idiot
In Parenthesis
Indication (medicine)
Jeremiad
Kinesics
Lucian
Male privilege
Masculinity
Mock-heroic
Name-dropping
Narcissism
Overreaction
Paradox
Periander
Persius
Philosopher
Philosophy
Philostratus
Physiognomy
Plotinus
Pride
Prostitution
Pyrrhonism
Quemadmodum
Quintilian
Religion
Rhetoric
Satire
Sexual Preference (book)
Snake oil
Sodomy
Solecism
Sophist
Sound effect
Suetonius
Superiority (short story)
The Idiot
The Philosopher
Thought
Treatise
Unstated assumption
Venality
Wickedness
Product details
- ISBN 9780691137346
- Weight: 312g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 24 Feb 2008
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
The careers of two popular second-century rhetorical virtuosos offer Maud Gleason fascinating insights into the ways ancient Romans constructed masculinity during a time marked by anxiety over manly deportment. Declamation was an exhilarating art form for the Greeks and bilingual Romans of the Second Sophistic movement, and its best practitioners would travel the empire performing in front of enraptured audiences. The mastery of rhetoric marked the transition to manhood for all aristocratic citizens and remained crucial to a man's social standing. In treating rhetoric as a process of self-presentation in a face-to-face society, Gleason analyzes the deportment and writings of the two Sophists--Favorinus, a eunuch, and Polemo, a man who met conventional gender expectations--to suggest the ways character and gender were perceived. Physiognomical texts of the era show how intently men scrutinized one another for minute signs of gender deviance in such features as gait, gesture, facial expression, and voice. Rhetoricians trained to develop these traits in a "masculine" fashion.
Examining the successful career of Favorinus, whose high-pitched voice and florid presentation contrasted sharply with the traditionalist style of Polemo, Gleason shows, however, that ideal masculine behavior was not a monolithic abstraction. In a highly accessible study treating the semiotics of deportment and the medical, cultural, and moral issues surrounding rhetorical activity, she explores the possibilities of self-presentation in the search for recognition as a speaker and a man.
Maud W. Gleason is lecturer in the Department of Classics at Stanford University.
