Adoxography

"ADOXOGRAPHY," […] The former word, with the still uglier "adoxographical," would seem to be of transatlantic origin. Some years ago I drew attention (9 S. xi. 425) to the use of the adjective in an American periodical (The American Journal of Philology, xxiii. 393).

Even Lucian's most playful exercises in adoxography, such as the Iudicium Vocalium or the Musica, can be rewritten and integrated into serious debate on contemporary issues.

The Voyage is kaleidoscopic composite of dream-vision, ideal journey, literary testament, adoxography, and mock epic.

The common factor among all three authors is the indulgence in paradox: the courtesan represents a notional ‘opposite’ to the intellectual, and therefore scholarship on courtesans has an air of ‘adoxography’ about it.

The conflation of these two figures is not only made possible by virtue of Despayre's association with the "unthrifty" vice of sloth, but also, and more importantly, because he justifies that vice through the deployment of sophistical adoxography. Beyond each orator's espousal of "ease," Belial and Despayre share a "rhetorical virtuosity" in the language they use to question divine purposes and manipulate their auditors through a variety of strategies often aimed at inverting the natural relationship between the "noble" and the "ignoble" – the very definition of adoxography.

In The Praise of Folly (1511), [Desiderius] Erasmus, who was one of [Alexander] Pope's favorite authors, effectively revived this classical genre of adoxography, described by Emrys Jones as a "perverse or paradoxical encomia" involving "the rhetorical praise or defence of things of doubtful value".

Judging by the recent literature of adoxography (a sorely underused word that means “good writing on a trivial subject”), there have been many overlooked things that have changed the world.

After all it was during this period that sophists tended to rely on the most common topics to push their speeches in the realm of rhetoric (e.g. the proliferation of adoxographies during the Second Sophistic). […] Contrary to [Marcus Cornelius] Fronto's letters, which tend to contain many variants and are taken from very distinct genres (epistolary genres – consolation, greeting and health letters, recommendation – but also adoxographies, treaties, historiography, judicial and political discourses, eroticos), the princeps' letters are generally closer to traditional epistolary themes (news regarding health, greetings, day's and journey's description).