Dramatic Stylization of the Narrative Forms in the Text of Cicero's Four Speeches against Catilina

Abstract

The article being here presented has constituted primarily a part of a master's thesis entitled Cicero's Four Speeches against Catilina. Dramatic Stylization. This work was an attempt of a modern interpretation of the widely known Latin prose. At the same time, such a re-reading of Cicero's speeches revealed, it seems, the dominance of the style in which this work has been written.

For − when treated and analyzed as a literary work of art − Cicero's text discloses many dramatic elements contained internally in its formal realm, especially in the syntactic structure, where quasi-dialogues, sets of rhetorical questions and answers, and personifications can be found. By means of these stylistic devices, the Consul's − ”the hero's” − monologue becomes transformed into a dialogue between Marcus Tullius-Consul − the subject of the monologue − and his quasi-partners. This very quasi-dialogue can even be regarded as the core of Cicero's speeches in their syntactic organization which is so similiar to the organization of Thespian tragic works and − what is extremely strange − to the composition of modern theater's monodramatic forms.

Thus, the supposition or proposition, that dramatization constitutes somehow the formal dominance in those famous speeches by Cicero, and that this very stylization can be regarded as the author's conscious plan is demonstrable.