Color jako termin retoryczny
Color as the rhetorical term

Author(s): Piotr Osiński
Subject(s): Philosophy, Language and Literature Studies, Other Language Literature, Philology, Rhetoric
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: color; Roman rhetoric; Cicero; Quintilian; Seneca the Elder; declamation; controversia
Summary/Abstract: This article briefly discusses the concept of color as a rhetorical term in Roman rhetorical literature. The term had several meanings: the style and character of work or speech, the stylistic device, the ornamentation or excuse and mitigating circumstance. A number of examples excerpted from Roman rhetoricians (especially from Cicero and Quintilian) and other authors which illustrate the above-mentioned meanings of this concept are quoted. Most attention, however, is devoted to the meaning of the term color in a type of declamation called controversia, in which it acquires the most technical sense: a brilliant turn in argumentation which, thanks to a skilful interpretation of facts, reduces or highlights the blame of an accused person. The term conceived in that way is usually associated with Seneca the Elder, the author of the work entitled „Oratorum et rhetorum sententiae, divisiones, colores”. Seneca not only lists examples of colores, excerpted from the other rhetorician's speeches, but also classifies and evaluates them, thus he becomes an important theoretician of the concept in question.

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