Tersites i la funció de la poesia d’invectiva

Abstract

This paper intends to re-discuss a subject that was long debated years ago and then somewhat neglected, the figure of Thersites in the Iliad as an invective poet, in relation to the social function of iambic poetry. The various aspects of the character are worth considering together, namely: his contradictory features; his portrayal as a specialist in laughter; the loaded description of his speech, and at the same time the collocation of the episode in the Iliad. His connections with the figure of the invective poet are discussed in relation to both his physical and social presentation, and to the insistence on the inadequacy of both form and content of his speech in the context of the Iliad (the heavy characterization in just three verses as ἀμετροεπής, ἔπεα ἄκοσμα, οὐ κατὰ κόσμον: the meaning of especially the second and third is much more precise than is usually assumed). These elements will be brought together and contrasted with the usual treatment of the invective poet in real life (as opposed to poetry) in order to conclude that the collocation of the episode in the Iliad may well tell us something about the function of invective poetry in archaic Greece.