Dysphony

The paper begins by criticizing, theoretically and practically, a view that may be termed “the picture−soundtrack dogma”: the view that the sound patterns of a text become expressive only on certain occasions. Then it turns to the analysis of dysphony of the grand style (essentially the substrate of the Homeric style) in [Pseudo?]Demetrius’ treatise “De elocutione” (Περὶ ἑρμενείας). The main argument is that dysphony is based on phonic density and also that it relates very closely to other levels of the text: metrical, syntactic, semantic etc.