人物描写における「上から下へ」の順序について

Abstract

The portrayal of Sophonisba in Petrarch's "Africa" (5, 18ff.) and that of Circe in Petronius's "Satyricon" (128, 3ff.) use the same device of describing a fair lady in that both describe each physical part one by one in order from head to foot. The description by Petrarch has been thought to follow the medieval style of portrayal which can be recognized both in literary works and handbooks of poetical theory, but Petronius' passage throws a doubt whether such a device goes back to the ancient rhetoric or literature. This paper attempts : 1. to summarize how the ancient rhetoric handled the description of personal appearance and how the 'a capite ad calcem (from head to foot)' rule came up. 2. to give examples from classical works that describe a person from head to foot in detail, and examine the influence of rhetoric on literary works from ancient times to the Middle Age. The ancient rhetoric has several terms related to the description of personal appearance. 'Enargeia, ' a figure of thought, is a vivid description, which "shows things as if before our eyes." There are some figures that are almost identical to Enargeia : Diatyposis, Hypotyposis, Leptrogia and Latin equivalents. Quintilian (8, 3, 64) refers to Enargeia of a person, but he seems to place an importance on describing the action or behavior rather than the appearance. 'Characterismos' is also a figure of thought, meaning just the description of a person. In earlier times this figure included description both of the appearance and of the action or behavior, but later Latin rhetoric handbooks show their interest only in the appearance. 'Ekphrasis' is not a figure but a name of the preliminary rhetorical exercise in Greek books titled 'Progymnasmata." This is the exercise of describing various objects "vividly as if before the eyes." Here Enargeia is treated as an effect of Ekphrasis (vividness), not as a figure. Persons are included among the objects. The two 4th or 5th century rhetoricians, Aphthonius and Nikolaus, give instructions to describe a person from head to foot in detail, while Theon and Hermogenes (2C.) do not state such a rule. The descriptions of persons (statues) in Libanius' "Progymnasmata" (4C.), a collection of many examples of the exercises, obediently follow the 'from head to foot' rule. We can only guess what kinds of exercises pupils were required to do before starting declamatory training before second century. Quintilian (2, 4) and Suetonius (De Gr. 4) say that 'Ethologia, ' which Seneca identifies with' Characterismos, ' was one of such exercises. According to Bonner (1977), description was an important element in Declamatio and its preliminary training was undoubtedly regarded as indispensable. Quintilian didn't include the exercise of description in his list, because he hated the excessive emphasis on description prevalent at that time. My supposition about the process of establishing the 'from head to foot' rule is as follows. In the rhetorical education of earlier times, the description of personal appearance was only one element of describing a person totally. Students might have referred only to a few peculiar physical parts among other characteristics, where the order of the physical parts was beyond concern. Later, as the rhetorical exercise lost its practical basis and the description itself became the purpose, students were urged to describe personal appearance (often statues) in great detail. The order, 'from head to foot, ' was most natural for such long descriptions. Finally in the 4th century Progymnasmatas, 'to describe a person from head to foot' was established as a rule, but it is impossible to determine when this sequence became the rule in school instruction. I found several examples in classical works describing a person from up to down. It is hard to determine whether the descriptions before 3C. are the application of rhetorical exercises or just from intuition. Ovid's two long descriptions (Met. 8, 801ff., 12, 395ff.) suggest the possibility of rhetorical influence. The portrayals by Petronius, Martial, Achilles Tatius and Ausonius seem to follow a kind of pattern in describing a beautiful person with praise, but the passages are not detailed enough to prove the influence of rhetorical exercise. Two portrayals (Ep. 1, 2 ; 3, 13) by Sidonius Apollinaris (5C.) are apparently the application of Ekphrasis, describing a person 'a capite ad calcem' in full detail. I cannot trace the 'a capite ad calcem' description from Sidonius until late 12th century, when this type of description was common both in literary works and in handbooks of poetical theory. As the two Progymnasmatas stating the rule were not available at this time, direct consultation is improbable. There are three possibilities regarding the source of medieval descriptions : 1. excessive emphasis on detailed descriptions was still alive in medieval education ; 2. there were some collections showing examples of rhetorical composition, such as Libanius' ; or 3. people took the earlier literary works as models applying the rhetorical rule (Sidonius was definitely an important model). The pattern 'from head to feet' was not a stated rule in medieval poetical theory, but later poets, including Petrarch, also followed this pattern.