A Rhetorical Genre(?)

Abstract

The chapter is a case study of Byzantine learned rhetoric in action, and some of the complications that one faces when one applies the concept of “genre” to Byzantine rhetoric. The test case is the invective, in Greek ψόγος, from the perspective of Byzantine rhetorical education and practice. After a series of general observations on rhetorical definitions of the “invective,” as well as on the fact that the invective resembles more a rhetorical “mode,” which is present in a variety of “genres,” than a “genre” per se, the chapter reviews a few representative related texts from the middle and late Byzantine period.