A Dissertation on Invective

Archives for April 2007

Greece & Rome, Part II: ‘Italic Vinegar’

30 April 2007 | Antiquity

In Anthony Corbeill’s essay in the 2002 Brill’s Companion to Cicero: Oratory and Rhetoric (ed. James May), he notes that Cicero “employs his most angry invective at those key points in his career at which he needs to shape new aspects of his public identity: as a righteous young prosecutor (Against Verres), as an elected [...]

Read ‘Greece & Rome, Part II: ‘Italic Vinegar’’

Invective in Classical Arabic Poetry

12 April 2007 | Antiquity

Invective is a curious word. It has existed in several languages over many centuries, taking on different shades of meaning. For most of my dissertation, it’s probably wisest to define it as Littré did: “discours injurieux, expression injurieuse contre quelque personne ou contre quelque chose.” This captures the wide berth given to invective in the [...]

Read ‘Invective in Classical Arabic Poetry’

An Introduction

12 April 2007 | General Thoughts

From what fabulous crossing of a slug with a peacock, from what genital antitheses, from what sebaceous oozing can have been generated, for instance, this thing called M. Gustave Courbet? 
–Alexandre Dumas, fils (tr. T.J. Clark)
I’m writing my dissertation on “Invective in French Art Criticism: 1840-1881.” I love browsing big open-stack libraries such as NYU’s (which [...]

Read ‘An Introduction’