The ekphrasis as rhetorical-discursive genre in C. Claudianus’ Gigantomachia
Abstract
Claudius Claudianus —probably from Alexandria— settled in Milan towards the end of 395 AD at the imperial court of Honorius, seeking to develop his poetic skills. Among the authors of the Roman literary canon who enjoy linguistic biculturalism, Claudian is one of the few to have verses in both Latin and Greek. The Gigantomachia, written in both languages, exposes the contextual characteristics of production, since it exhibits rhetorical techniques typical of the Second Sophistic. During the expansion of this cultural phenomenon, the use of different stylistic devices such as ekphrasis, which can be seen in the panegyric epic of the Egyptian poet, intensified. In view of the above, this paper will focus on the analysis of ekphrasis in the Latin Gigantomachia, not as a mere ornament but as a rhetorical figure that structures the different moments of the story, contributing emotionally to the vivid representation of the images according to the principles of epictic rhetoric. The importance of the ekphrasis in the evolution of the late epic allows us to conceive of it as a genre in which the poetic voice suspends the narrative in order to divert attention from the whole to the brilliance of its parts, interweaving the different scenes of war through a variety of ekphrasis.
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