Abstract:

Published in: A. Giewekemeyer, ed. Liber Amicorum: Jürgen Horn zum Dank. Göttingen. Göttingen: Göttingen Seminar für Ägyptologie und Koptologie der Universität, pp. 113–129.

The following are notes taken in the course of an ongoing long-term study on “Shenoute’s Rhetorical Syntax”, mapping the grammatical (mainly syntactic) poetics of Shenoute’s published and unpublished work, with a focus on rhetorical value and effect of forms and constructions. I wish to present here textual and descriptive materials on some not unimportant rhetorical devices which, beyond having rhetorical functions (such as lusis), also signal tonal and emotional nuances, in particular bearing on Shenoute’s often underplayed sardonic sense of humour, irony and sarcasm. Note that this is a mere outline: the observations basic, brief and often laconic, discursive and occasionally repetitive, the theses tentative and often, I fear, half-baked, the bibliographical referencing minimal, the illustration no more than representative.

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