Asianism
The Asianism (ie originating from Asia ) was a style in the ancient rhetoric , which in v 3rd century. BC in the Greek cities of Asia Minor, and its founder is Hegesias of Magnesia (around 320–280 BC). In the 1st century BC This style was controversially discussed in the Attic-Asianism debate. Asianism is the style that artfully adorns the sentences and makes them extravagant.
With the shift in the economic and cultural focus from the Greek to the Asian mainland, which took place during the Hellenistic period, the rhetoricians' ties to the Attic tradition of rhetoric were broken. The Asians set themselves a brighter and more effective way of speaking as their goal, which the atticists dismissed as gay and pathos , showmanship and mannerism.
Hortensius Hortalus (114–50 BC) is considered an important representative of Asianism, but he had to put up with the fact that his way of speaking was equated with bad style by the representatives of Atticism , who paid attention to simplicity and objectivity.
Cicero , who dealt with the Asianism-Atticism debate in Brutus and "Orator", differentiated two Asian styles: on the one hand, the sentence style , which consists of short, antithetically constructed, pointedly pointed, rhythmic sentences. These sentences should attract attention through their artistic form, which is achieved through a parallel or chiastic sentence structure and a focus on the rhythm of the sentence. In this first style, the focus is on the formal design of the sentence. The second type aims to develop a "passionate flow" through the words of a speech. The abundance of words is connected with the conscientious consideration of which word looks decorative and witty. Both types have the free lexis in common, which means that new word creations, archaisms or poetisms are not uncommon.
The concept of Asianism was used by the atticists as a weapon against the Roman opponents. A uniform and independent Asian school with its own teaching program never existed, and the Asians did not see themselves as such.
In the early imperial period, the Asian style changed into the so-called modern style , with Seneca as the most important representative.
literature
- Joachim Adamietz : Asianism. In: Gert Ueding (Hrsg.): Historical dictionary of rhetoric. Vol. 1. Tübingen, 1992, Col. 1114-1120.
- Ulla Fix , Andreas Gardt , Joachim Knape : Rhetoric and stylistics . de Gruyter, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-11-017857-9 .
- Karl-Heinz Göttert : Introduction to rhetoric. Basic concepts - history, reception . Fink, Paderborn 2009, ISBN 978-3-8252-1599-6 .
- Gert Ueding , Gert Steinbrink: Outline of the rhetoric . Metzler, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-476-02410-7 .