Rhetorique et poesie

Abstract

Aristotle made a distinction between poetry and rhetoric because the former concerns what is possible and the latter facts. One can, however, note points of contact between the two disciplines. Poetry can indeed argue and, in epideictic speech, is aligned with rhetoric on the need to promote the values of beauty. Besides, Aristotle recognized that “thought” and “ways of expression” equally characterized both. This provides above all a global, highly flexible vision of language, solving the conflicts, as one can see especially in rhetorical figures. Not only does the ethos-logos-pathos trio enable one to define rhetoric conceived as “problematological” in M. Meyer’s words, but it also applies to all linguistic functions, so that one can see poetry as a branch of rhetoric or both as the two poles of the same linguistic activity.