Abstract

FRIEDLANDER, Pablo. El lenguaje poético de Empédocles. Synthesis (La Plata) [online]. 2005, vol.12, pp.59-77. ISSN 0328-1205.

Talking about poetic language in Empedocles' fragments situates us in a very unusual way of analysis of his "cosmological-cathartic" epic, namely the hexameters polemically attributed to the philosophical poems We are not dealing here with the endless disputes around such attributions; instead, we will confine ourselves to reveal Empedocles' saying at the semantic and rhetoric levels of his textuality, focusing our attention on his purely poetic methods. Poetic language appears as this paper's axis, since it is possible to observe and classify in a quantitative manner its specific procedures. Therefore, it offers itself as a database, allowing us to obtain qualitative assessments in a rigorous manner. It is intended here to summarize a research about the poetics exhibited in the use of metaphors, metonymies, alliterations, similes, repetitions, and some other rhetorical figures. We shall start basically on the traditional model of referentiality inherent in the hexameter used by Empedocles. Our aim is to understand the strategies for composition and perception offered by this philosophical-range epic, together with the traditions that it reshapes and the perspectives that it creates.

Keywords : Empedocles; Poetic Language; Philosophical Epic.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )