Abstract EN:

The question to be asked is whether reported speech, described by the Latin people as oblique utterance (oratio obliqua) is a deferred account of speech acts which when reported by a third person hide the original speaker to the point of becoming incorporated in the narration or on the contrary is it an intense and performative speech act. As is shown, the answer lies in the second hypothesis. Consequently reported speech should not be examined independently from direct speech, of which it is not so much the rival as a complementary and original variant. This study has been carried out by drawing upon rhetorical treatises, the grammar of text, and a stylistic reading of the syntactic, expressive as well as the analytical writing of direct speech. From this study real discourse strategies stand out which are modulated according to the circumstances of the verbal exchange, the character of the speaker and of the ability to persuade brought to bear upon the recipient. A long diachronic, evolving from the three great Latin historians, Caesar, Titus Livy and Tacitus, leads to the story of a style so much so that reported speech is an extraordinary stylistic tool at the service of a truth, the mimesis of people.