Savage Words: Invectives as a literary genre (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781946328601)

The meaning these texts are intended to convey is rather monotonous; they all say, in one form or another, "I don't like you." Hence, the whole point of producing them is to communicate this age-old message in new and unprecedented ways. We might be rather unimaginative in our day-to-day interactions, but when we sit down to write, a certain degree of novelty is imperative. In fact, one would say that in order to work, no two orationes invectivae can be exactly alike (not even humanistic ones). At the same time, however, one doesn't want to be so inventive that the audience fails to recognize the text for what it actually is. This double constraint (creativity and transparency) produces an endless quantity of variations, and is the real engine of that verbal inventiveness we see at play; ultimately, this is the reason why we find these texts so interesting to study and to write.

From the Introduction by Gianluca Rizzo