IDIHCS   22126
INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACIONES EN HUMANIDADES Y CIENCIAS SOCIALES
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
WAR IN TWO FACES: An Odyssean perspective of War
Autor/es:
ZECCHIN DE FASANO, GRACIELA C.
Lugar:
Burdeos
Reunión:
Congreso; XIV International Congress of FIEC; 2014
Institución organizadora:
Université Bordeaux Montagne
Resumen:
War in two faces: An Odyssean perspective of War
Graciela C. Zecchin de Fasano
Centro de Estudios
Helénicos-IdICHS- FAHCE-UNLP
Homer is a paradigm for the later representation of the war, because the
Greeks transformed the war into both an aesthetic and political object, even
into a subject of philosophical reflection.
The Cretan tales by Odysseus (Odyssey
13, 253-286;14.192-359; 17.415-444; 19, 165 299) are found between the most
interesting tales in Homeric Poetry. These tales constitute a micro-narrative including
a different voice and a very contrasting vision about war. As apocryphal biographies
of Odysseus, these tales present a progressive linear story; they start from
the beginning, ab ovo, and in this
way they are separated from the compositional form of both the nostic discourse
and the epos narrative, since they do not begin in medias res, expression
usually applied to any definition of epic.
Why Odysseus needs to tale
the history of Trojan War by a biographical Cretan perspective? Can we associate
this type of narrative with other perspectives of the same war, for instance,
with the human compassion that Odysseus finally shows in Sophoclean Tragedy? Or
with the war for identity (Persian Wars) and finally with the war for the
hegemony of one city (Peloponnesian War) as well as Herodotus or Thucydides told
us? In the same way the Herodotean
narrative or Thucydides? narrative of Peloponnesian war are based on characters
or speeches to show the confrontation of hegemonic ideas of a community. My approach does not seek any historical background
in Homer as it was done in the past but it tries to understand why the ancient
Greeks considered literature the best way to represent their history. For
instance, in Homer the mythical version offers a vision of history based upon
conflict, dissension and linguistic opposition.