La φαντασία du poète et de l’orateur dans le traité Περὶ ὕψους de Pseudo-Longin : dénouement d’un débat ancien

• Published in: Methodos (Villeneuve-d'Ascq, France) Vol. 19; no. 19
• Main Authors: Richard, Alexis, Molina, Vanessa
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English; French
• Published: Université de Lille 01.01.2019
• Subjects: linguistic effectiveness; phantasia; Pseudo-Longinus; rhetoric; sight; sublime
• ISSN: 1626-0600; 1769-7379
• DOI: 10.4000/methodos.5969

What gives a speech – be it from a poet, an orator, a professor, or a politician, etc. – its effect? How do you measure such a thing? In the first century, Pseudo-Longinus, in his treaty On the Sublime, weighs in on the question as he ponders what it is that drives linguistic expression to its highest degree of effectiveness. The sublime is an ecstasy, an elevation that goes beyond mere persuasion to snare time under a net of glory (Subl. i, 3). To reach such heights, phantasia, thought by most ancient authors as something in speech that conjures “images”, is given a fundamental role. The following text aims, on one hand, to highlight the role played by Pseudo-Longinus in the long philosophical and rhetorical debate on phantasia – alongside Aristotle, Epicurus, Chrysippus, Cicero and Quintilian, among others. On the other hand, the text discusses the contribution that Pseudo-Longinus makes to the understanding of this notion. Associated with sight by metonymy, phantasia allows what is being said to be felt within one’s body. When it succeeds, the speech, the orator and the audience share communally in that feeling. When phantasia touches the sublime, the creativity of the audience becomes active and appropriates what has been said, thereby pushing it past its initial boundaries of personality, time and place.