Description
This book presents an introduction to the Characters, a collection of thirty amusing descriptions of character types who lived in Athens in the fourth century BCE. The author of the work, Theophrastus, was Aristotle's colleague, his immediate successor and head of his philosophical school for thirty-five years. Pertsinidis' lively, original and scholarly monograph introduces Theophrastus as a Greek philosopher. It also outlines the remarkable influence of the Characters as a literary work and provides a detailed discussion of the work's purpose and its connection with comedy, ethics and rhetoric.
Table of Contents
Sources and abbreviations
Preface
Introduction
- Theophrastus: his life, works and character
- Before and after Theophrastus’ Characters
- The Characters as a comedy of manners
- Behaving badly: ethics and the Characters
- Style, delivery and the role of character in rhetoric
- Epilogue: conclusions and implications
Index
