Le personnage théâtral dans les approches « poétique » et « pratique » du texte dramatique à lépoque classique en France

The idea of the dramatis persona posited by the first French theatre theorists of the Richelieu circle, Jean Chapelain and Jules de la Mesnardiere, emerges as a quite literał implementation of the Aristotelian concepts unfolded in the sixth and fifteenth chapter of his Poetics. In a later period, the third of the aforementioned group of authors, François Hédelin d’Aubignac, dismisses the Aristotelian categories, erecting his theory upon the elements adopted from the Roman theory of rhetoric. The analysis of the Persona in classical drama theory allows to reconstruct the relation between these two 17th century dramatic approaches. The former is the traditional perspective relying on the postulations of the Aristotelian theory. The latter, which is a practical grasp, is new to the 17th century’s dramatic mindset, and was formulated by abbé d’Aubignac. Whereas the axis of poetics is the structural analysis of a work of art, it is the functioning of that work of art in the theatrical process of communication between the stage and the audience that remains the core interest of the practical approach. In this process, the rhetorical effect of presence of the dramatis persona should by created in the imagination of the spectator-auditor. The subject of analysis is common to both perspectives and the discrepancies concem merely aspects of its description. Therefore poetics and practice are neither competitive nor mutually exclusive, but can both legitimately coexist in the description of the very same work of art.