L’exemplification en latin, entre métaphore et métonymie

In its origins, the rhetorical example involves the analogical projection of past events onto a present case in order to predict future outcomes and make appropriate decisions. In Latin texts, however, the historical or mythological exemplum is often transformed into a simile that presents a model of behaviour. Moreover, when the exemplum is further condensed into particularizing synecdoche and antonomasia, its conceptual and formal structure becomes similar to that of the ‘canonical’ example, which is typically used in scientific discourse to illustrate a phenomenon, demonstrate a rule or construct a category through one or more representative cases. From a logical, cognitive, and functional point of view, there is therefore a continuum between the rhetorical exemplum and the scientific example, which unfolds between the two poles of metaphor and metonymy. This paper will show that Latin exemplification develops its structures and markers based on these two conceptual schemes, and that the cultural changes and stylistic requirements of different genres gradually lead from the metaphorical projection associated with the rhetorical exemplum to the metonymic catalogue implied by the canonical example.