La couleur rhétorique au xviiie siècle, entre esthétique et èthos oratoire idéal. Comment la critique de Milton poète en porte témoignage

Abstract

In rhetorical treatises by Cicero and Hermogenes ‘colour’ referred to the general tone of speech. Colour favoured ethos against seductive imagination. The post-Renaissance union of poetry and eloquence by means of pathos and sublimity required more than stylistic ornamentation. Colour reflexivity became consistent with aestheticized rhetoric in 18th c. Britain as bellelettrist Adam Smith converted ornament into inventional colour. Milton criticism destabilized the link between orator’s ethos, discursive logos, and audience’s pathos. Classical rhetoricians highlighted the poet’s sublime colours. New rhetoricians pinpointed his perspicuity. By defining Milton’s style as precise and sublime, Addison and Blair aestheticized figures. But colour encountered hermeneutical complications in the case of allegorical “Sin and Death”. In early romanticism elocutio was permeated with the colouring of imagination. “Milton” was a meta-figure of the orator poet, an ideal ethos prophesying its rhetorical character. The diction of natural colours became suffused with enargeia and implied indeterminacy of meaning.