La Force de la Parole: Anthologie Sur Les Pouvoirs de la Parole Dans l'Antiquite

The ancient world never ceased to be amazed by the paradoxical power of speech, this "all-powerful sovereign," as the famous rhetorician Gorgias put it. Thanks to it, citizens are heard in assembly, litigants win cases, orators say what is beautiful or ugly, just or unjust, and philosophers invent concepts. Poets, rhetoricians, historians, philosophersall sought to understand it and master its mysteries. Unique in its genre, this work offers a broad panorama of texts from Antiquity that, from the 8th century BC to the 4th century AD, deal with the powers of speech. Whether they celebrate them, denounce them, or seek to master them, these texts describe the particular power of speech, its social, political, or even theoretical and intellectual effects. Written at different times, and therefore in different historical contexts, they stem from the same astonishment at the hold that speech has on the world.