Natura e fine dei Caratteri di Teofrasto. Storia di un enigma
-
Graziano Ranocchia
Abstract
The question of the nature and the scope of Theophrastus’ Characters is one of the most intricated and most desperate puzzles of classical studies. Today many scholars are either sceptical about the possibility of giving a univocal answer to this vexatissima quaestio or prefer not to take position about it. Among the most various interpretations four principal theses arise. According to them, the Characters represent respectively: 1. a complement to a treatise of moral philosophy; 2. a literary work written in an artistic prose with a humorous intention; 3. a rhetorical exercise for training in schools of rhetoric; 4. the appendix to a treatise of poetical theory. Through a historical survey of the relevant scholarship, I will show that the first two positions cannot reasonably be held any more. The last two ones, instead, conserve most of their scientific value and should be used in the next future as a new hermeneutical basis for a possible solution or semplification of the ‘Theophrastean question’.
© by Akademie Verlag, Roma, Germany
Articles in the same Issue
- Per l’interpretazione di Pind. Fr. 140 a S.-M. (= G 8 Ruth.)
- Forms and Conceptions of Dike in Euripides′ Heracleidae, Suppliants, and Phoenissae
- The Unity of Plato′s Meno. Reconstructing the Author′s Thoughts
- Natura e fine dei Caratteri di Teofrasto. Storia di un enigma
- Das Bild des Kynikers Diogenes in griechischen, syrischen und arabischen Texten
- Die zweite Reise des Odysseus in Lukians Verae Historiae
- Folklorica
- When Giants Stumble: Two Influential Misjudgements on Horace′s Odes (2. 20. 56 and 3. 30. 1014)
- Die Seelentaube bei Prudentius
- Is the First Line of the Acharnians Paratragic?
- Stratone AP 12. 193. 1
- De Philippicarum locis aliquot
- A New Echo of Pliny the Younger in Jerome?
Articles in the same Issue
- Per l’interpretazione di Pind. Fr. 140 a S.-M. (= G 8 Ruth.)
- Forms and Conceptions of Dike in Euripides′ Heracleidae, Suppliants, and Phoenissae
- The Unity of Plato′s Meno. Reconstructing the Author′s Thoughts
- Natura e fine dei Caratteri di Teofrasto. Storia di un enigma
- Das Bild des Kynikers Diogenes in griechischen, syrischen und arabischen Texten
- Die zweite Reise des Odysseus in Lukians Verae Historiae
- Folklorica
- When Giants Stumble: Two Influential Misjudgements on Horace′s Odes (2. 20. 56 and 3. 30. 1014)
- Die Seelentaube bei Prudentius
- Is the First Line of the Acharnians Paratragic?
- Stratone AP 12. 193. 1
- De Philippicarum locis aliquot
- A New Echo of Pliny the Younger in Jerome?
