Metabasis : a few words about apostrophe

The main aim of the paper is to make some remarks on apostrophe (aversio), its figurative nature and discursive functions. The figure of rhetorical address to some person other than judge has many affinities with other linguistic or stylistic devices, for instance exclamation, a rhetorical question, animation, personification, aposiopesis, prosopopoeia. As a rhetorical aversion it remains always involved in a communicative context. Using many modes of figuration, apostrophe conveniently gives poet the opportunity to modulate his poetic voice. Then, it seems to be a mark of invested passion or sublime poetry. The considerations on apostrophe are concentrated on three issues: forms and meanings of this figure in rhetorical tradition (Quintilian, Górski, Keckermann, Stanisław Kostka Potocki, Euzebiusz Słowacki), idea of apostrophe as a central figure of post-Enlightenment poetry (Jonathan Culler), and its role in a poetic invocation (for example of Jan Kochanowski’s Latin ode to Henryk Walezy and stanza addressed to ‘Heavenly Muse’ in Torquato Tasso and Piotr Kochanowski).