La voix d’Hélène dans l’épopée homérique : fiction et tradition
Homeric scholarship usually considers Helen as an allegorical substitute for the poet or the Muses. But the homeric Helen is a fictional character, staged in the narrative by the poet who considers her as a central character for his epics. Being simultaneously Menelaus’wife and Paris’wife, she is an...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Anthropologie et Histoire des Mondes Antiques
2012-05-01
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| Series: | Cahiers Mondes Anciens |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/mondesanciens/829 |
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| Summary: | Homeric scholarship usually considers Helen as an allegorical substitute for the poet or the Muses. But the homeric Helen is a fictional character, staged in the narrative by the poet who considers her as a central character for his epics. Being simultaneously Menelaus’wife and Paris’wife, she is an archetypal bride, as noticed by Nancy Worman, and she is the unique feminine character present on stage both in the Iliad and the Odyssey, in the trojan as well as in the lacedaemonian oikos. She is the one everyone talks about and who, on the other hand, shows herself concretely and singularly, using direct speeches. Enouncing herself in first person discourse, she adapts her speaches to her audience and alters the lines of the so called feminine discourse, revealing a voice emancipated from the normative standards (social or ritual). She is an autonomous character who affirms her presence in front of gods and men, in rupture with the traditional figures of brides, disturbing the narratological categories and, being placed between two worlds, she seems to question the traditional masculine language of the epics. |
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| ISSN: | 2107-0199 |