Le lieu de l’abus : poésie et taḫyīl chez ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Ǧurǧānī (m. 471/1078)

Abstract

Abstract This article aims to determine the specificity of the notion of taḫyīl in ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Ǧurǧānī’s (d. 471/1078) work. We will attempt to define this rhetorical device and explain the rhetorician’s interest in it. Taḫyīl consists in taking a word or sentence used in a figurative sense, in its literal sense. Although this definition is well-known, it remains uncertain in many respects (what is its decisive criteria? Is it a figure?). To answer these questions, it is necessary to take into account the ethico-rhetorical frame of the question of the taḫyīl in al-Ǧurǧānī’s work. It is first determined as a rhetorical misuse resulting from a deceptive syllogism, and then as a specificity of poetry: indeed, taḫyīl is not to be blamed only in poetry. We will show that taḫyīl should not be considered as a figure but as a topos (literally a “place,” in Aristotelian rhetoric) used to overemphasize one’s statement, i.e. to provide an excess of the assertion (mubālaġa fī l-iṯbāt).