Dichiarazioni di novità poetica nei contesti letterari della Grecia arcaica e classica

This dissertation proposes a philological and literary analysis of selected statements of poetic novelty, from Homer to go as far as to Hellenism. The first passage I deal with is Telemachus'statement about the song of Phemius in Book I of the Odyssey (Od. I 351s.), and I come to the conclusion that novelty coincides with overlapping planes between the singing of returns and the return of Odysseus in its making. Regarding archaic lyric, I examine two Alcman's self-celebrating seals (PMGF 39; PMGF 17), one of which is still too tied to the poetics of mimesis, and four verses from the Corpus Theognideum, which describe the mission of the poet through a series of activities (Thgn. 769-772). In most of these cases I come to the conclusion that poetic novelty does not coincide almost never with the concept of †˜originality'. Then I focus on Pindar's poetic experience †" notably N. 8, 19-21 †" which is fundamental to all subsequent poetic declarations of novelty: the poet consciously reflects on the danger of exposing novelty to his detractors / rivals and uses a particular poetic language. The following long chapter deals with the sphragis of Timotheus' Persians (PMG 791, 202-236), in which we can find all the topoi of the defense and legitimation of poetic novelty: the refutation of the critics, the definition of a new category of bad poets, the reinterpretation of tradition through a model of the past and the ultimate celebration of poetic novelty.