BMCR 2009.02.31, Danielle van Mal-Maeder, La fiction

Danielle van Mal-Maeder, La fiction des de/clamations. Mnemosyne
Supplementa 290.  Leiden/Boston:  Brill, 2007.  Pp. ix, 193.  ISBN
9789004156722.  $113.00.

Reviewed by Neil W. Bernstein, Ohio University ([email protected])
Word count:  1338 words
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Roman declamation remains an unjustifiably understudied genre, though
recent commentaries on individual declamations (Minor as well as Major)
have certainly begun to ameliorate the situation.[[1]] As Mal-Maeder
justly observes, disparagement of this "hybrid" genre used to be the
typical reaction, and so previous studies did not devote much attention
to the literary qualities of Roman declamation. This brief and
well-conceived monograph examines the conventions and generic
ingredients of declamation's fictional universe (ch. 1), the genre's
narratological conventions (ch. 2), use of description (ch. 3),
representation of voices different from that of the normative voice of
the male speaker (ch. 4), and the relationship between declamation and
the ancient novel (ch. 5). In addition to its contributions to the
study of declamation as literature, this book also serves well as an
introduction for the first-time reader of Roman declamation. Mal-Maeder
provides detailed background to the basic conventions of the genre,
along with numerous lengthy citations (accompanied by clear French
translations) from each of the collections. An appendix provides a text
and translation of the themes and laws of the nineteen Major
Declamations falsely ascribed in antiquity to Quintilian.

In chapter 1, Mal-Maeder briefly and effectively surveys the different
genres that nourish declamation, which include historiography, tragedy,
and comedy and mime as well as oratory. Though mythological narratives
are rarely treated directly in Roman (as opposed to Greek) declamation,
declaimers can make use of mythological comparisons to describe both
ordinary family conflicts and extraordinary situations such as
predestined murder and cannibalism (in Decl. Mai. 4 and 12
respectively). Folktale elements also appear: for example, fathers
thrice disown their sons and heroes thrice perform heroically.
Instances such as these support Mal-Maeder's view of declamation as an
independent genre which does not attempt to replace either the rhetoric
of the real-world courtroom or of historiography. On this view, the
failures of declaimers such as Albucius and Latro to speak well outside
the schoolroom (Sen. Contr. 7 pr. 6-7 and 9 pr. 3 respectively) points
not to the worthlessness of declamation itself but to those
individuals' failure to respect its proper performance context.
Declamation instead makes a "pacte de lecture" with the reader similar
to that found in the ancient novel. The real world may be a constant
point of reference, but the declamatory world, like the fictional world
created in the novel, has carefully differentiated itself from it.

Chapter 2 offers a narratological reading of the levels of
"e/nonciation" found in declamation. The declaimer and his audience in
the extratextual world must be separated from the advocate, client,
adversary, jury, and others in the fictive world of the declamation;
the advocate in turn may deploy the "discours cite/s" of other speakers
within his speech. Such use of ethopoeia enables the declaimer to
distance himself from the words he speaks, and thus grants him the
freedom to air unconventional social views without taking
responsibility for them. The effect of the declamation differs
depending on the ethos of speaker imagined to deliver the words. An
advocate representing the women, minors, madmen, or others who cannot
speak for themselves will necessarily maintain a more distanced
perspective on the case than a "narrateur homodie/ge/tique," such as an
aggrieved father or husband who pleads a case in which he is personally
involved.

The descriptions in declamatory literature form the subject of chapter
3. Such descriptive passages always have a "functional" purpose: the
ecphrasis of the humble agellus in Decl. Mai. 13 (Apes pauperis), for
example, is aimed at arousing the audience's pity for the unfortunate
farmer. Yet many of these same passages also have sophisticated
self-reflexive and intertextual dimensions. The same declamation's
account of the bees' virtuous activities offers a learned evocation of
Vergil's 4th Georgic, while praise of their architectural skills
permits the declaimer to call attention to his own carefully shaped
discourse by drawing on the traditional comparison between bee and
poet.

Several recent studies (such as, among others, those of Gunderson,
Bloomer, and Richlin[[2]]) have focused on declamation's construction
of a normative and exclusionary conception of Roman masculinity.
Mal-Maeder's chapter 4 discusses the genre's representation of the
voices of those who do not belong to this privileged category, such as
women and effeminate men. In Decl. Mai. 8, for example, a wife accuses
her husband of misusing his paternal authority by permitting a doctor
to dissect one of their twin sons, while Decl. Mai. 10 presents a
mother's "feminine" emotion as superior to her husband's "masculine"
but brutish reason (she continued to communicate with the ghost of
their dead son, while her husband hired a magician to dispel the
ghost). While arguments on behalf of women in speeches such as these
might appear "progressive," delivery by male speakers in a fictional
genre that typically experiments with unconventional social views
diminishes their ability to effect change in the world outside the
schoolroom. Mal-Maeder's brief  survey of homosexuality in declamation
(which draws on Gunderson's fuller treatment) observes the connections
between sexual submission, the perceived loss of masculinity, and, as
in Sen. Contr. 5.6, loss of the authority to represent oneself in
court.

On the traditional view (as presented, e.g., by Rohde and
Bornecque[[3]]), the ancient novel developed in part from the
"miniature novels" found in declamation. The foundlings, adulterers,
and wandering merchants of some declamatory narratives certainly find
themselves in situations that might be described as novelistic. But as
Mal-Maeder, also author of a commentary on Apuleius'
Metamorphoses,[[4]] argues in chapter 5, it is rather that both genres
draw on a similar cultural tradition, and the differences between them
cannot be overlooked. As the jury never delivers its verdict, the
situations of declamation remain "open," whilst those in the novel are
brought to resolution; there are no young people in love in the
declamatory universe, where amor is a wholly negative force; and the
novel's greater scope permits more sophisticated development of
character.

Declamation is only one of the many genres skilfully manipulated by
Petronius and Apuleius in their novels. Like the examples of
self-reflexive discourse discussed in chapter 3, Petronius' famous
attacks on declamation can also be viewed as self-reflexive, as they
are themselves delivered in declamatory form. Apuleius includes
declamatory situations only to surpass the familiar declamatory scheme,
as when the trial of the wicked stepmother (Met. 10.6-8) quickly
develops into a far more intricate narrative than any declamatory theme
could possibly sustain. While critics such as Petronius' Encolpius may
accuse schoolroom declamation of failing to prepare its students for
the real courtroom, the Metamorphoses also shows the deployment of
judicial oratory to be a farce--as in the "trial" of Lucius or the
trial of the wicked stepmother which ends not with an oratorical
victory but a deus ex machina. This valuable chapter ends with a
sustained reading of declamatory conceits in the trial of Melite and
Leucippe at the conclusion of Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon.

I would mention only a few minor criticisms. The willingness of later
Greek declaimers to treat mythological themes[[5]] would appear to tell
against Mal-Maeder's view (p. 9) that the Roman declaimers address such
themes infrequently because the characters' situations and motivations
are too well known and thus leave the speakers only limited freedom of
action. Like Quintilian, Mal-Maeder also compares the declaimer who
adopts a different persona to the stage actor who employs a mask to
separates himself from his role (p. 46). Such "distance" did not always
afford declaimers adequate protection from their lapses of tact,
however, as Latro discovered when he declaimed on the theme of nepos ex
meretrice susceptus before an emperor who was contemplating an adoption
at the time (Sen. Contr. 2.4.12-13). The difference in social status
between stage actors and practitioners of declamation must also be
considered: the actor presumably has much less to lose. These small
points of disagreement should not be taken to detract from Mal-Maeder's
considerable achievement. This book makes important contributions to
the study both of Roman declamation and of the Roman novel, and its
examinations of declamation's self-reflexivity, narratological
complexity, and generic interplay will prove especially valuable.


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Notes:


1.   Examples of recent commentaries on individual Major Declamations
include DM 3, ed. G. Brescia (Bari 2004), DM 12, ed. A. Stramaglia
(Cassino 2003), DM 13, ed. G. Krapinger (Cassino 2005), and others.
Commentaries on individual Minor Declamations include DMin. 317, ed. G.
Brescia (Bari 2006) and DMin. 268, ed. I. Mastrorosa (Torino 1999).

2.   Erik Gunderson, Declamation, Paternity, and Roman Identity.
Authority and the Rhetorical Self (Cambridge 2003); W.M. Bloomer,
"Schooling In Persona: Imagination and Subordination in Roman
Education," Classical Antiquity 16 (1997) 57-78; Amy Richlin, "Gender
and Rhetoric: Producing Manhood in the Schools," in W.J. Dominik, ed.,
Roman Eloquence. Rhetoric in Society and Literature (London 1997),
90-110.

3.   E. Rohde, Der griechische Roman und seine Vorlauefer (1876); Henri
Bornecque, Les de/clamations et les de/clamateurs d'apre\s Se/ne\que le
Pe\re (Lille 1902).

4.   Apuleius, Metamorphoses II. Introduction, texte et commentaire,
Groningen 2001.

5.   E.g., Libanius Decl. 3-8; see, e.g., D.A. Russell, Greek
Declamation (Cambridge 1983), 107.