Héraclès comme figure de l’archaïsme dans la poésie hellénistique

Abstract

Christophe Cusset and Benjamin Acosta-Hughes focus here on the widely different parallel treatments that two major poets, Theocritus and Apollonius of Rhodes, give in their respective works to the figure of Heracles, symbol of the archaism that can be reinvented, resized or otherwise discarded, according to the choices that appear, on each occasion, meaningful for the one who questions aesthetics of these poets. Apollonius indeed expells from his renewed epic a hero who is famous as a figure attached to an archaic form of epic heroism, whereas in Theocritus Heracles, while being recognizably an archaic hero, is seen in a perspective that is not archaic, but totally transformed by the new perspective that focuses on the poet himself.

Keywords

• épic
• epic tradition
• Hellenistic archaism
• Hellenistic poetry
• Heracles
• renewal