O escudo de Aquiles

Abstract

The present study starts from the representation of the poetry that precedes the Homeric poems as an attempt to locate the origen of lyric poetry. The sources are fragments of Homeric poems and some historiographical records from History of Literature, which also rely on data provided by Archaeology and Anthropology. Conforming to these sources, this “original poetry” is linked to the ritual, the magical and the religious spheres. According to Hauser, there would be professionals of magic word, whose origin is the prehistoric magus-artist. In the Homeric text, the divine aoidos enigmatically emerges surrounded by dancers. In the Iliad, Achilles’ shield, forged by Hephaestus, is described over 136 verses in which there are excerpts with dances being conducted by songs not performed by expert aoidos, such as Phemius and Demodocus. Dance is also connected to poetry in the arts group that dispenses tékhne presented by Plato in the Ion. As stated in Vernant, the forms of expression that lead to Greek religion unite the myth (key event for the establishment of literature, according to Lesky), the rite (linked to the dance), and the figurative representation. Finally, the evidence points out to the existence of another poetry, other than the Homeric epic, and of conceptions of poet that diverge from that of the expert aoidos.