연애편지의 수사학 - 라클로의 『위험한 관계』속의 편지들을 중심으로 -

Abstract

The aim of the study is to examine the rhetoric strategies of love. Persuasion is the act of convincing someone to do something or to believe. Love letter is a form of utterance with a clear purpose to achieve the someone‘s heart. Therefore analysing love letters is a relevant way of investigating the diverse rhetorical strategies. Choderlos de Laclos’s the epistolary novel, Liaisons Dangereuses will be analysed here. The rhetorical tropes are examined especially in the two couples’ letters. First, the letter of Valmont (to Madame Tourvel) and the letter of Danceny (to Cecile) will be discussed. Examined rhetorical techniques used in the love letters, I analyse the rhetorical situation of the letter of Valmont and Danceny as the role of addressee(audience)and the type of letter. The type of letter was corresponded with three genres of classical rhetorics such as judicial, deliberative and epideictic genres. For next stage of analysis, I applied the three of the five canons of rhetorics, which were used for the discovery of arguments comes from Aristoteles as reference framework, They were inventio, dispositio, and elocutio. The topos of the declaration of lovers, the organisation of dicourse, the strategy of argumentation, the expression of sentiment of love, figure of speech, and three Aristotle categories of persuasion (ethos, logos, pathos) were analysed. Through these analyses, I found that the letter of Valmont was the forme of judicial genre and the letter of Danceny was the form of epideictic genre. In case of persuasion in love letter, the epideitic genre in the letter of Dancey was more powerful than the judicial genre in the letter of Valmont. The former took the rhetorical strategy of exaggeration for the sentimental appeal. On other hand, the latter took the demonstration trope for mutual faith and sound judgement. Because, we could not reason love in itself. Only we can sense and feel love.