Froideur et saveur de la rime chez Boileau

The author of the Art poétique was highly preoccupied with the processes surrounding the epithet, as certain texts, like the Satire II, demonstrate. Boileau considered the success of a poem to be manifest in its rhyme : a rhyme’s appeal was the fruit of a concern with the meaning which determined its choice and animated it. This is why Boileau associated the epithet with formal verbalism : a major imbalance hampering the readability of the poem as well as its beauty.