Le bestiaire de l’Idylle 15 de Théocrite

Abstract

Theocritus’ Idyll 15th contains an extraordinary bestiary for the attentive reader. If we exclude the Sirens and Mormo, the catalog of animals includes the ant and the elephant, the weasel, the sheep, and baby nightingales, to name a few.Three categories of animals are involved in this Idyll: animals mobilized for dramatic reasons; animals whose presence is indirect, conveyed by objects and thirdly, animals evoked by language, most often metaphorically.This essay aims to provide a detailed observation of this remarkable bestiary and interpretations of the pervasive presence of animality in this text, which one can quickly identify as an urban mime. Importantly, Theocritus offers, together with this bestiary, a reflection on language and poetry.Finally, and this is not necessarily foreign to this metapoetic reflection, for the first time in Greek literature, a character, Praxinoa, expresses her phobia for two animals. The text stages her in direct confrontation with one of them. It will be shown that her pathology could be linked to both political and poetical considerations.

Keywords

• Theocritus
• bestiary
• horses
• snakes
• metapoetics
• phobia