Les masques de Claude de Malleville

Abstract

The work of Claude Malleville, man of letters, recognized by his peers and his contemporaries, and secretary of the marshal Bassompierre, high lord at the court, allows the study, through the various genres he used as a writer, of a diversity of discursive ethos, or masks, all of them different from the face of the one writing it. These fluctuations of the ethos, generic as well as contextual, also reveal the specificities of the poets’ function during the 17th century and have to be analysed while taking into account the readers’ proficiency, according to the keys used by those readers to discern which figure hides behind the mask of enunciation.

Keywords

• encomiastic poetry (17th century)
• rhetorical ethos in poetry (17th century)