A treaty is an agreement that marks the end of a negotiation or dispute.
From the Latin tractatus , a treaty is the closure or completion of a negotiation or dispute, after an agreement has been debated and reached. The notion of treaty is used to name the documentation that records said conclusion and, in a broader sense, the text or manual on a certain subject .
The notion of international treaty is used to name one that is signed by actors of international law and that can be made up of one or more linked legal tools. This tool is usually used to set territorial limits or end a war.
One of the most famous treaties is the Treaty of Versailles , which was signed in 1919 at the end of World War I. Among its most relevant consequences was the imposition on Germany and the nations that supported it to accept material and symbolic responsibility for the war.
Treated as a literary genre
As a literary genre , the treatise is part of the sphere of didactics and consists of the objective and comprehensive declamation of a specific subject. Through different sections, the treaty uses the expository text to address a specialized audience that aims to increase their knowledge on the subject in question.
The treaty must include a large amount of precise data, such as definitions, dates or magnitudes, often included in the footer so as not to hinder the reading and understanding of the text.
It is divided into numerous sections that help organize it in a correlative and logical way, just as in the case of the novel the different events are grouped into chapters . Furthermore, the author writes in the third person and always refers to the same audience, which has a certain notion of the subject or is familiar with some concepts that are explained in this text.
International treaties are linked to legal tools.
Different types
At the same time, within this literary genre there are some subgenres which have to do with the type of information that is disseminated, the audience to which they are directed, the type of language that is used or the way in which it is structured. Some of these subgenres are monograph , pamphlet, dictionary , encyclopedia, summary and manual .
Experts maintain that the dictionary , encyclopedia , manual and monograph , among others, are subgenres of the treatise. Aristotle ( 384 BC – 322 BC ), Saint Thomas Aquinas ( 1225 – 1274 ) and Denis Diderot ( 1713 – 1784 ) were some of the cultivators of the treatise as a literary genre.
Aristotle's treatises
Of all of them it is worth mentioning Aristotle as one of those who stood out. He wrote treatises on different areas, such as natural sciences, philosophy, zoology and logic . In doing so, he consulted various sources and critically discerned what could be relevant to the investigation. He was, it is worth mentioning, the first to propose a systematic structure for this type of texts that would allow a simpler and more orderly reading.
Thomas Aquinas, based on this structure imposed by Aristotle , continued to develop techniques to improve the genre. His Summa Theologica brings together a treatise on theology where he expresses his research and arguments regarding human nature and the existence of God. Although it is a book with absolutely dogmatic expositions that leaves no room for contradictions and that was fundamental to disseminate Scholastic pedagogy, not all treatises are of a similar nature. In fact, in a treatise there may be space for doubt and counter-argument, since the objective is to lead the reader towards knowledge of the truth and in many cases this is relative.
As complementary information and to finish this exhibition, it is worth mentioning that in its origins the genre served to capture the codes and norms of coexistence that were established in the various towns, also recording the historical events and the different pacts that were made. Because of this, even today the agreements that are signed between various nations on a specific matter are called this way.