View source for Atticism

{{Short description|Rhetorical movement originating from 1st century BC Greece}}
{{about|Greek literature|the 17th century French art movement|Parisian Atticism}}
{{Rhetoric}}
'''Atticism''' (meaning "favouring [[Attica]]", the region of [[Athens]] in [[Greece]]) was a [[rhetoric]]al movement that began in the first quarter of the 1st century BC. It may also refer to the wordings and phrasings typical of this movement, in contrast with various contemporary forms of [[Koine Greek]] (both literary and vulgar), which continued to evolve in directions guided by the common usages of [[Hellenistic Greece|Hellenistic]] Greek.

Atticism was portrayed as a return to Classical methods after what was perceived as the pretentious style of the [[Sophist]] rhetoric and called for a return to the approaches of the [[Attic orators]].

Although the plainer language of Atticism eventually became as belabored and ornate as the [[peroration]]s it sought to replace, its original simplicity meant that it remained universally comprehensible throughout the Greek world. This helped maintain vital cultural links across the [[Mediterranean]] and beyond. Admired and popularly imitated writers such as [[Lucian]] also adopted Atticism, so that the style survived until the [[Renaissance era|Renaissance]], when it was taken up by non-[[Greek people|Greek]] students of [[Byzantine]] immigrants. [[Renaissance]] scholarship, the basis of modern scholarship in the West, nurtured strong Classical and Attic views, continuing Atticism for another four centuries.

Represented at its height by rhetoricians such as [[Dionysius of Halicarnassus]], and grammarians such as [[Aelius Herodianus|Herodian]] and [[Phrynichus Arabius]] at [[Alexandria]], this tendency prevailed from the 1st century BC onward, and with the force of an ecclesiastical dogma controlled all subsequent Greek culture, so that the living form of the Greek language was quite obscured and only occasionally found expression, chiefly in private documents, though also in popular literature.

However, there were writers such as [[Strabo]], [[Plutarch]] and [[Josephus]] who intentionally withdrew from this way of expression in favor of the common form of Greek.

== See also==
* [[Asiatic style]]
* [[Laconism]]

==Further reading==
*Wisse, Jakob. "Greeks, Romans, and the Rise of Atticism." In Nagy, Gregory (ed.). ''Greek Literature in the Roman Period and in Late Antiquity Greek Literature.'' London: Routledge, 2001. 65–82. ({{ISBN|978-0-415-93770-2}})

{{Authority control}}
[[Category:1st-century BC establishments]]
[[Category:Attica]]
[[Category:Ancient Greek literature]]
[[Category:Literary movements]]
[[Category:Rhetoric]]


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