This master's essay of literary analysis studies the rhetorical notion of the sublime in a number of discourses drawn from the Relations des jesuites de Nouvelle-France, including harangues pronounced by Amerindian leaders, panegyrics, letters of missionaries and dream accounts. In view of models of the sublime proposed by rhetoricians of classical Antiquity, this study shows the close bond which unites ethics and aesthetics in the Jesuit's mind. The criterions according to which the missionaries are affected by the great discourses are considered. This study also emphasizes the influence of the sublime, which provides the impetus for the apostolic vocation and the mystical quest of the Jesuits.

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