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Protreptic: A Protean Genre
This chapter attempts to outline the disciplinary tradition of protreptic and to highlight certain methodological difficulties connected to it. The lamentations concerning “the scandalous state of genre theory” (Jordan 1986:328) in general and the protreptic genre in particular have themselves become a generic convention in studies dealing with this topic, and not without reason. To begin with, the genre received in antiquity no rhetorical treatment as a distinctive form of oratory, whereas references to the protreptic χαρακτήρ in philosophers are scarce and contradictory. Our capacity to proceed by means of description is also limited, for many writings entitled “protreptic” have only survived in fragments (and reconstructions often proceed from the postulation of a “generic pattern”, which itself needs justification). Another complicating factor is that the historical and philological instrumentarium has been supplemented, with varying success, with approaches like motif analysis, theories of intertextuality or narratology, or various communication approaches. Consequently, the term ‘protreptic’ has come to be used in a loose and imprecise manner depending on the position adopted by the author. The next vexing problem encountered by those who wish to understand protreptic concerns demarcation. Protreptic frequently appears in combination with other literary types, (auto)-biography, paraenesis, or epistolography, for example. How do different types cohabit within one piece of writing? Various, sometimes mutually exclusive, solutions have been suggested by scholars which we will discuss in what follows. Lastly, problems are aggravated by the fact that historians of philosophy on the one hand, and biblical scholars and specialists in Jewish and Christian literature on the other, have approached the term “protreptic” and its cognates in very different ways. Although the interdisciplinary gap seems to be diminishing the question still remains open as to how the classical forms of protreptic were adapted in the prophetic religions like Judaism and Christianity.
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