Approches de la stylistique leibnizienne: l’Iconologia de Cesare Ripa et les exempla romanesques

Abstract

This paper offers to examine both the contemporary approaches to the study of Leibniz philosophical style and shed light on how they share a common dependency on a conception of what “style” is, directly coming back from the romantic tradition. The article first focuses on the baroque fable with which Leibniz closes his Essays of Theodicy, in order to analyse the problems raised by the use of allegoric and symbolic repertoires – such as Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia – considered as privileged instruments to convert figures of speech into their denotative equivalent. The paper examines then the attempt, on behalf of certain commenters, to search for punctual correspondences between literary exempla in Leibniz writings and his theory on series rerum and possible worlds. It appears as a conclusion that the researcher could benefit from an alternative method of analysis pertaining to the literary stylistics.