The Gildersleeve Prize for the Best Article Published in the American Journal of Philology in 2012 has been Presented to Rachel Ahern Knudsen, University of Oklahoma

for her contribution to scholarship in “Poetic Speakers, Sophistic Words,” AJP 133.1:31–60.

Knudsen here presents and studies four showpieces of sophistic rhetoric as a literary and educational experiment that sheds light on a fascinating cultural moment in which poetic, forensic, and philosophic discourses were beginning to crystallize in their classical forms. In the works examined here, Gorgias’ (Self)-Defense of Palamedes, Alcidamas’ Odysseus-impersonating Against the Treachery of Palamedes, and Antisthenes’ paired Ajax and Odysseus, the sophists appropriate the characters of epic to showcase the techniques of rhetoric, a didactic approach more appealing and more accessible than that of rhetorical handbooks. The literary achievement of these speeches suggests tantalizing parallels with the confluence of myth and philosophy and other forms of generic hybridization in this period. Knudsen shows, moreover, just how ahead of their time these mytho-forensic forays from the Classical period turn out to be, anticipating as they do the progymnasmata of the Second Sophistic era.

Judges for The Johns Hopkins University Press

Ralph M. Rosen, Chair

Ellen Greene

Cynthia Damon

The Twenty-fifth Annual Gildersleeve Prize of $1,000 will be awarded for the best article to appear in the Journal in 2013. The Press would like to thank the members of the committee for their time and effort.