Rhétorique des fleurs absentes : Les scrupules académiques et stylistiques des récits d’expédition

This paper aims to go beyond the apparent aporia between the ornamental use of “flowers of rhetoric” intended to please and seduce a wide audience and the ideal of transparency and aridity of the scientific relationship of travel. It shows that in the gap between “form” and “substance”, despite travellers' protests, the return of the “literary” can be observed, which is not always incompatible with the narrative of the lived experience. The aim is therefore to nuance the traditional opposition between accounts of scholarly travel and literary works.