Mobilidade poética na Grécia antiga: uma leitura da obra de Simónides

Abstract

The study Poetic mobility in Ancient Greece. Readings of Simonides’ work fixes the analysis of Simonides’ corpus in a broader investigation on lyric poets’ mobility. At the end of Archaic Age, Simonides of Ceos (c. 556-468 B.C.) already represents the terminus of a long tradition of poetic mobility from which appear certain echoes in the Homeric Poems and in Hesiod’s Works and Days. In the “Introduction”, we discuss these and also other testimonies of the existence, in ancient times, of wandering singers, but this study was applied to the tradition of the rhapsodes who made of mobility a way of living. On the other hand, before Simonides, there were significant lyrics who had influenced his work and who, mostly due to their mobility, had an important part in Ancient Greece’s musical culture. In the first part of this dissertation, we study the main reasons of this practice: the participation in festivals or musical competitions, like the Pythian Games, the Delian festival or the Carnea, and the hospitality offered by generous patrons. In the last chapter, we briefly discuss the conditions in which these journeys were made. In the second part, dedicated to Simonides’ mobility space, after a brief exam of the biographical data, research focuses in the sources available on the activity performed within public festivals, and also in information relative to his most famous patrons or other people with whom he contacted for professional reasons. In the last chapter we discuss the stories about the poet’s character, transmitted through pseudo-biographical tradition, which is probably a result of false readings of his work, but that confirms the prestige the poet achieved in ancient times. In the third part of the thesis, the analysis of Simonides’ corpus was organized according to the dominant themes (reflections on human condition, the praise of athletes, the celebration of those who fought the Persians, references to gods and heroes, the theme of nature), with special attention paid to the language and literary processes. Besides the “Conclusions” and the “Bibliography”, the thesis also includes “Ancient authors and sources Index”, “Modern authors Index”, “General Index” and “Table of contents”.