ABSTRACT
Eco shows how a careful rhetorical analysis of ‘Exercices de style’ underlies his Italian translation of Queneau’s text. At first sight, it may look as though Queneau had wanted to put into practice a variety of traditional figures from the ‘Ars rhetorica’, each text focusing on one rhetorical device. Closer scrutiny reveals instead that (1) he did not limit himself exclusively to such traditional figures (e.g. parodies also appear), (2) he used many more figures than the exercises’ titles suggest, and (3) he did not typically use the figures for ‘serious’ rhetorical purposes (e.g. for aesthetic, stylistic or persuasive effect). (1) and (2) demonstrate the ubiquitous nature of rhetoric and call for a broader framework for studying it: Groupe μ describes devices along two distinctions (‘word/higher order’ and ‘form/content’). Regarding (3), Eco remarks that the comic 222may be a standard rhetorical purpose but that, very often, Queneau applied the rules of rhetoric literally, contravening their spirit, and thus created opportunities for play. Translating the ‘Exercices’, Eco suggests, is detecting, applying, evoking and flouting the rules in a similar way; with one important caveat: the flouting of form-related rules does not perforce create completely nonsensical linguistic chaos, since the generic embedding and its underlying rules of transgression confer meaning on ‘noise’.
