Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics: Their Points of Confluence

Abstract

Rhetoric and Poetics have a long cultural and conceptual history in common. Although Aristotle claims in these treatises the autonomy of their respective disciplines, he also recognizes that they share a common domain. This paper wants to show the external and internal confluence that closely links both works and both disciplines. In the first section, we do some research on the two positions that the ancient catalogues and presentations assign to the teachings of Rhetoric and Poetics. The analyses of the second section intend to establish that the conceptual interdependence of the two disciplines occurs in the joint field of διάνοια and λέξις . Finally, we argue that in thought and elocution —as we cautiously translate them— could be suggested the common history that rhetoric and poetic have had in their later development, as they were mutually and alternatively absorbed.