Читать книгу Amphion Orator - Michael Taormina - Страница 9

This section of the book resuscitates the historical conventions, cultural assumptions, and critical terms necessary to appreciate the unique achievement of Malherbe’s royal odes. Its focal point is the megalopsychosmagnanimitymegalopsychos, the Aristotelian great soulmagnanimitygreat soul (NE 4.3), because it is both an ethosethos and a virtuevirtue, and because it was considered the wellspring of la grande éloquence [the grandstylegrand style]. Chapter 1 examines how the ethosethos of magnanimitymagnanimity, modeled on Henri IV, encompasses and defines the members of the body politicbody politic. Chapter 2 asks how the virtuevirtue of magnanimitymagnanimity shapes the conceptions of monarchypolitymonarchy and the national communitynationnational community. Chapter 3, the longest of these three, investigates the rhetorical climate and the hybrid genus dicendi of the royal odes to contextualize their version of the grandstylegrand style. There was no way to define and to develop the notions of ethosethos, virtuevirtue, and eloquenceeloquence, to relate them to the historical context, and to show how they organize the composition—one might say, the enunciation—of the royal odes, while at the same time explicating in a clear and coherent way such highly complex poems. Such a division allows the concepts and arguments presented in Part I to be used without excessive comment in the close reading of the royal odes in Part II.