Features of the “diatribe” in the writings of Iosif Volotskii

Abstract

This article investigates to what extent features of the “Cynic-Stoic diatribe” (a dialogical mode of exposition encountered in polemical-didactic writings, which originated in Hellenistic Greek) are reflected in the writings of Iosif Volotskii (Joseph of Volokolamsk), most notably in his main polemical treatise against the so-called “Judaizers”, known as the “Prosvetitel’” (“Enlightener,” henceforth: P). The phenomenon of the diatribe will first be briefly introduced, both as regards its Greek origins as well as its transfer into Old Church Slavonic and its further development in Orthodox Slavic writings from the 10th century onwards. Next, some attention will be devoted to Iosif ’s background and the context of P. Some of the main features of the diatribe in P will then be presented and their use will be compared to Slavic translated texts as well as their Greek originals. It will be shown that the features of the diatribe in P. occur in an attenuated form and thus can be considered a residue of the diatribal mode of discourse organization. At the same time, some of these features clearly serve a pragmatic purpose of subjectivizing the discourse. This latter issue will be discussed on the basis of terminology developed by Fr. Récanati (1997), H. Clark (1996) and others.