Chapter 5

• Rhetoric ,Poetics and Poetry

In this text is defined both poetry and rhetoric, their
differences and the ways in which they are connected.
Aristotle is the one who first separated the two, rhetoric being
the art of persuasion and poetry being the art of imitation. The
two forms were integrated and separated a few more time by
history, until the late twentieth century when rhetoric was
revived as the study of the structuring powers of discourse .
Poetry, on the other hand, is said to be language that makes
abundant use of figures of speech and language that aims to
be powerfully persuasive .
 Rhetoric ,Poetics and Poetry
.There are listed a few rhetorical figures that literary theorists find important in both
poetry and rhetoric. There is lists of four that theorists agree are the most significant:
metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony. There are obviously many more figures of
speech that are important in both rhetoric and poetry, but these four tropes are the
most basic structures by which we make sense of experience.
Poetry is one medium through which poets aim to make that sense. It , can be seen in
many different ways, such as either a structure (the actual words on a page meant to be
read) or an event (the act of the poet or the experience of the reader). Poetry can be
defined through the relationship of the author to the speaker, and by extension, that of
the speaker to the reader. Especially in lyric, it is crucial to make the distinction between
the voice that speaks the poem and the poet who created it, for the author may not be
intending for their voice to narrate. This distinction is also linked to genre, as the Greeks
divided their works according to who speaks. There are three: poetic or lyric, where the
narrator speaks in first person; epic or narrative, where the narrator has a voice but
there is also dialogue spoken by other characters; and finally drama, where the
characters are the only ones that speak.
 Rhetoric ,Poetics and Poetry
• As previously stated, rhetoric and poetry are
closely linked. In poetry, rhetorical devices are
used to exaggerate and sometimes hyperbolize
the human experience. To treat poems on a
different level than other forms of rhetoric.
Poems are simply explorations in poetics
through the use of those rhetorical devices,
and at their basest sense, are attempts at
creating meaning from our experiences.