Aristoteles Pezographos: The Writing Styles of Aristotle and their Contribution to the Evolution of Ancient Greek Prose

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Aristotle, a supreme intellectual figure, transformed both philosophy and other disciplines such as natural science and literary studies. Yet his own style and language have been overlooked, although he stands chronologically between classical Attic prose and the Hellenistic koine of most prose genres after the late 4th-century BCE growth of the Greek world. This project addresses his place in the history of literature and language, especially in relation to Homer, drama, rhetoric and Plato, writing a new chapter in the narrative of prose-writing that has excluded him. It scrutinises all his treatises largely regarded as authentic, plus the contested Athenaion Politeia, using methodologies including 'traditional' literary criticism, narratology, stylometric software and historical linguistics, allowing an unprecedented appreciation, in relationship to scientific method and communicative medium, of his illustrations, allusions, syntax, figures of speech, sentence type, paragraph and treatise structure, language and vocabulary. The outputs offer complementary perspectives: 1) illustrations and allusions; 2) sentence types, figures, tenses and relationship with oral communication; 3) vocabulary, language and place in the evolution of Greek; 4) how ancient philosophical commentaries responded to his style; 5) dedicated studies of single treatises or stylistic and philosophical topics (International Conference); 6) annotated bibliography (Website). The results will transform Aristotelian studies by providing the first assessment of Aristotle's neglected status as writer; this will enhance future studies, especially understanding how Aristotle's distinctive literary voice interacts with his scientific method and makes his ideas more lucid, vivid and memorable. The results will also inform future investigations of the Peripatetic treatises for which Aristotelian authorship has been suspected and the precise nature of the style to which his heirs and commentators responded.