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In 431 BCE the Athenian statesman Pericles delivered one of the most influential speeches of all time, his Epitaphios or Funeral Oration. The occasion was at the funeral of the first Athenian soldiers to lose their lives in the Peloponnesian War.
Professor Fletcher proposes that it can be understood in terms of the normal functioning of the mind, which seeks to construct a working model of reality even though it has very little direct contact with that reality.
I will argue for the essential unity of speech and gesture in the transmission of thought, and suggest that we have underestimated the considerable communicative significance of these movements.
The lecture asks how the ancient fables address power relations in a slave society. Were they primarily stories for and by slaves, or did they serve ruling-class interests?