La metarretórica cognitiva aristotélica y su relación con el tratamiento de la memoria en la Rhetorica ad Herennium

Abstract

This article examines the influence exerted by the Aristotelian cognitive metarhetoric over the treatment of memory in Book 3 of the Rhetorica ad Herennium. Sections 3.16.28–29, 3.19.32 and 3.22.35–37 are read against the backdrop of the core principles of Aristotle’s psychological treatises on mind and memory, De Anima and De Memoria et Reminiscentia, together with the multifaceted concept of energeia, found in these treatises as well as in the Rhetoric and the Metaphysics. The results suggest that the psychology of memory of the Rhetorica ad Herennium and its rhetorical products are indebted to Aristotelian philosophy, with particular emphasis on the imagines agentes within the mnemonic system per locos et imagines.