Consolatio, or consolatory oration, is a genre of ceremonial oratory typically used rhetorically to comfort mourners at funerals, encompassing consolatory speeches, essays, poems and personal letters united by their treatment of bereavement, a distinctive rhetorical structure and set of topoi, and their use of universal themes to offer solace. A typical consolatio opens on the theme that all must die, and its standard rhetorical approach elaborates variations on that theme: the universality and inevitability of death across all ages, and the equality of death across generations. The genre flourished in classical antiquity, with origins traced to the fifth century BCE, and experienced renewed prominence during the Renaissance humanist period.
Facts
Place of OriginAncient Greece and Rome (classical antiquity) 1 Notable ExampleBoethius' Consolation of Philosophy 1 Defining Traitopens on the theme that all must die, using universal mortality to console the bereaved 1 In the Other Atlases
Originated In
Also in Geography Atlas: where this subject originated.
Source Consolatio, Wikipedia
Sources
1. Consolatio, Wikipedia
History section
This literary tradition flourished in antiquity, and its origins date back to the fifth century BC.
History section, bedrock works paragraph
it is not until Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, Seneca's Ad Marciam, and Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy that a unified character appears.
Consolatio as a literary genre section
The conventional opening of a consolatio was 'All must die.'
In Group: Funeral Oratory and Consolation, Lead paragraph
is a type of ceremonial oratory, typically used rhetorically to comfort mourners at funerals
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