Epipolesis – the reception of a discourse of homeric origin by the Portuguese historiography of the sixteenth century

Abstract

This article briefly discusses the reception of a type of discourse that goes back to the Homeric epic by the Portuguese historiography of the sixteenth century: epipolesis. In an age of emulation, the sixteenth-century historiographers have made of their works not only repositories of past memory, but also high and erudite compositions in which rhetoric played a determining role. As in antiquity, one witnesses the progressive dramatization of historiographical works, with the inclusion of impressive descriptions of battles and discourses, such as epipolesis. In fact, this type of speech prints enargeia to ekphraseis in that fall, as a captain, giving a hortatory speech while advancing the wing of his army, contributed not only to the consecration of its great general status as causes commotion in readers of these narratives. Thus, from a methodological point of view, a corpus of discourses identified in the 16th century Portuguese historiography is analyzed typologically and differently according to factors such as the terrestrial or maritime surface in which the said discourses are pronounced. Then, the same corpus will be analyzed according to the methodological principles applied by Longo (1983) to Thucydides’ speeches which, depending on their pronunciation, can be unitary or differentiated depending on the homogeneity or qualitative heterogeneity of the auditorium.