Paroles édifiantes: les Éloges d’Antoine-Leonard Thomas

Abstract

Treating the eulogies written by Thomas between 1759 and 1770, we show how the use of reported speech of the persons being eulogised is part of a memorial ceremony that brings the character to life. This theatrical process helps to blur the generic status of these texts, which are halfway between historical narration and rhetorical speech. The use of reported speech may be understood less as a means of individualising the person in question, however, than of promoting him as an exemplum embodying virtues in action. These virtues derive from Aristotle’s analysis of the aims and values of epideictic rhetoric, but the rhetorical design of Thomas’ eulogies shapes an underlying ideological discourse designed to make a pragmatic impact on the reader: transforming the genre from an academic exercise of scholarship into an engaged discourse, Thomas clearly sides with French ‘philosophes’, and his eulogies confirm the evolution of the genre described by Jean-Claude Bonnet: their purpose is at one to celebrate the past, to satirise the present and, perhaps, to influence the future.