ORATION AS A BODY: ON THE AESTHETICS OF TEXTUAL PLEASURE

Abstract

Starting from Socrates’ claim in Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus, which states that each oration is composed as a living being whose integrity, function and aesthetic dimension are represented through an organicistic metaphor of the body, we come to the contemporary literary-theoretical postulates on the liaisons of eros of the text and recipient. Socrates’ concept of the oration, i.e. text, as a textual body found its later foundation in literary theories, significantly changed, such as the notion of Roland Barthes on the text as erotic body par excellence in which, as in enjoyment (jouissance), we take delight. Through the unifying idea of ​​textuality and the phenomenon of eros, the essay argues the dialectics between the text and the recipient by intertwining Merleau-Ponty’s idea of ​​the phenomenology of the word and the expression status and Barthes’ idea of ​​the text as a satisfying object. The aim of this paper is to reveal a fruitful understanding of the reading/listening act as a kind of satisfying sensation through Merleau-Ponty’s implications of ​​the corporeality of the consciousness and the intentionality of the body, interpreted in close connection with Barthes’ theoretical position on the text as a fetish which allures, seduces and becomes an ”open list of the fire language”. The dialogue between Merleau-Ponty’s and Barthes’ theoretical position will help us understand the corporeal structure of the oration as well as the relation between the orator, the aesthetic aura of the body of oration and its effects on the audience.