Un renouveau poétique de l’idylle pastorale par les rythmes accentuels dans les Lettres d’Alciphron

The phonetic evolution of the Greek language which, towards the end of the Hellenistic period, substituted for the quantitative rhythm, based on the opposition of duration of the syllables, a rhythm based on the distance between stressed syllables, allowed the emergence of new poetic processes which followed after the traditional metrics: the equality of number of accents between several cola and the echoes between stress-related clausulae. The analysis of some of Alciphro’s bucolic letters from this point of view reveals that they are sorts of poèmes en prose organized in isotonic stanzas, with isotony of cola and recurring clausulae in close echoes. This discovery reveals the really artistic character of these letters. It also supplies a criterion of choice between variants or conjectures when the text is corrupted.