The mechanics of rhetorical theory may therefore have provided a language within which to express the complexities and paradoxes of fictional discourse. Rhetoric provided not just the tools for the verbal representation of action, character, time and place that is at the heart of the novel, but also for reflection on the nature of that representation. Perhaps the clearest example of this is in the long story of the meeting of Theagenes and Charicleia that Calasiris tells to Cnemon in the Aethiopica (2.255.1). Cnemon is notoriously avid for sensation. He demands that Calasiris not just narrate but ‘show’ him the procession at which the young couple first met (3.1). Calasiris’ resulting ekphrasis is so effective that Cnemon recognises the couple from the description and cries out, ‘it’s them!’ (3.4). Calasiris in turn interprets Cnemon’s response to mean that the couple are actually present and have not simply been conjured up by his speech. The episode is an ironic comment on the rhetorical theory of enargeia with its claims to ‘make absent things present’, i. e., to create an illusion of presence that provokes an emotional and imaginative response in the audience through words alone.61 It is equally a comment on the nature of fiction, whose job is precisely to make us feel present at events that are ‘like’ reality but which are ultimately a creation of the word.
Like the novel, declamation conjures up people, places and situations that are ‘like truth’.62 Both declamation and the novel use language - whether narration, direct speech by characters or description - to represent complex situations that belong to an intermediate domain of likeness, between truth and lies. The rhetorical theory and practice of the Roman period provided some of the tools that the writers of the novels could use but, far more importantly, it provided intensive practice in the creation of likeness to truth as well as the means to reflect on that practice. Declamation alone cannot explain the novels, any more than the progymnasmata can, but it is surely significant that the novel developed in a culture where intense effort and energy were spent on using language to create complex fictional situations and on reflecting on that creative project and on the ambiguities involved.
So, far from being an intrusion into the novel, rhetoric is deeply ingrained in the very existence of the genre. Rhetoric and its codes also constitute another level of meaning within the novel. Characters’ use of speech serves to indicate their sexual, social and cultural development as they pass through the events of the novel. The trials and other explicit references to rhetoric, particularly those in Cleitophon and Leucippe, foreground questions of identity, interpretation and the nature of knowledge as well as the ability of language to convey that knowledge. Above all, the rhetorical use of language affects the readers emotionally and intellectually and draws them into the text, just as Cnemon is drawn into Calasiris’ narration, so that the readers share, through logos, in the experience of erOs that is at the centre of the narratives.
World History
