L'unité de la “vaste sphère poétique”

Is there, in the work of Paul Ricœur, as has been said, a form of dissymmetry between the field of metaphor and that of narrative ? From The Rule of Metaphor, the reference to Northrop Frye and to Nelson Goodman will make it possible to fully grasp the unity of the poetic sphere. The Rule of Metaphor and Time and Narrative are then presented as two twin works. Paul Ricœur explains in particular that lyric poetry itself has the power to produce a plot, and that in this sense “the feeling articulated by the poem is no less heuristic than the tragic tale.” (The Rule of Metaphor (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986 [1978]), 245.) Following certain references made in these two twin books – where the dialectic between “discovering and creating,” “finding and projecting” (The Rule of Metaphor, 306) can be read –, it is then possible to make a common thread appear in the analyses where a general idea of the creative act presents itself as a viewpoint. The work of art becomes experience, proof of a “tensional” conception of truth, a dialectic between “the experience of belonging” and “the power of distanciation.”