Revista de Estudios Sociales (Dec 2012)

Ideología, retórica y dialectalismo en las “vidas paralelas” de Plutarco: una nota sobre “Pirro”, 26, 11 y “Cimón” 14, 3-17, 2

  • David Hernández de la Fuente,
  • Óscar Martínez

Journal volume & issue
no. 44
pp. 28 – 35

Abstract

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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 σημεία 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.

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