Nourritures terrestres, nourritures célestes et rhétorique du sublime dans l'art de Bossuet panégyriste

Abstract

In the Panegyrics of saint Gorgon, Bossuet uses the topics of eating and drinking, and changes its meaning under the paradigm of catholic dogma : it doesn't help any more to express humiliation, but to express the greatness of christianism. This paradoxical construction of christian sublime forms the bedrock of an approach of language as eating and digesting : the topical construction raises the legendary aspect of the narrative of martyrdom - a border case of narrative fiction -, which is itself a component of the poetics of panegyric.