Revista de Estudios Sociales

rev. estud. soc. | eISSN 1900-5180 | ISSN 0123-885X

Ideology, Rhetoric and Dialectalism in Plutarch’s “Parallel Lives”: A Note on “Pyrrhus”, 26, 11 and “Cimon” 14, 3-17, 2

No. 44 (2012-12-01)
  • David Hernández de la Fuente
  • Óscar Martínez García
https://doi.org/10.7440/res44.2012.04

Abstract

The rhetorical skill of the biographer Plutarch of Chaeronea in his Parallel Lives is made manifest by certain linguistic usages with which he characterizes his protagonists. Plutarch describes his literary technique as a sort of impressionist composition where some details of each character, signs or σημεῖα of his soul, are highlighted, defining each character through this. In this paper we study Plutarch’s masterly portraits of character with pro-Laconian inclinations as a result of the shrewd insertion of dialectalisms in his discourse as a writer well-known for his impeccable literary koiné. As case studies for our analysis of the rhetorical usage of dialectalism in Plutarch when characterizing a certain ideology of his protagonists, we have chosen the lives of Pyrrhus and Cimon.

Keywords: Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Pyrrhus, Cimon, Dialectalism in Literature, Philolaconism

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.