Enacting and Experiencing Martyrdom in 4 Maccabees

Building on second-generation cognitive criticism, notably enactivism, on studies of phonetic iconicity, especially on the use of prosodic and phonological effects to convey meaning, as well as on ancient reflections on enargeia, this article investigates the narrative and linguistic strategies used by 4 Maccabees to create enargeia/immersion in the scene of Eleazar’s martyrdom—one of 4 Maccabees’ most immersive scenes and one of the peaks of the story. Through a close reading focused on verbal forms (tenses and voices), prefixes, adverbial expressions, space markers, bodily movements, phonetic mimesis, prose rhythm, and metaphoric language, it argues that in this scene enargeia is achieved by a narrative carefully constructed through enactive style and linguistic strategies close to the audience’s non-mediated way of perception, highly effective in engaging the audience into an embodied experience of martyrdom.