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Au torrent de ses pleurs la Sainte ouvrit la porte : stylistique des figures d'enargeia dans un choix de poèmes consacrés à Marie-Madeleine (1617-1669)

2021 - Leo S. Olschki

P. 485-523

  • The meditative practices and the spiritual literature of the 17th century accord an important place to images, whether they are material images, in particular engravings inserted in devotional books, or language images, in other words textual sequences based on the capacity of language to put its object under the eyes, which rhetoricians have studied and illustrated under the heading of enargeia, both a stylistic quality and an effect of discourse. The present study investigates the treatment of enargeia-figures (notably ecphrasis and hypotyposis) in five poems dedicated to Mary Magdalene, whose life and conversion are a theme particularly dear to artists and writers of the Grand Siècle.
  • We will analyze the different ways in which the poets, by appealing to thereader's vis imaginativa and by awakening his affects by striking descriptions, exploit the pathetic and psychagogical potential of the story of Mary Magdalene. We particularly focus on the porous border between the virtuosity of theecphrasis, a figure of the delectare, and the emotional density of the hypotyposis, an instrument of the movere, within the framework of a strategy of making believe. [Publisher's text]

Forma parte de

Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa : LVII, 3, 2021