Elegy: Forms, functions and communication

Abstract

The first topics are the analysis (synchronic & diacronic) of words about ‘elegy’, the ways of communication in archaic and classical age (oral performance, inscriptions) and a brief history of sympotic elegy from Ionia to Sparta and the Attic elegy of V sec.; later on, a new hypotesis about public performance of elegies through the lecture of ‘new Simonides’ and most recent ‘new Archilochus’. A particular attention is paid to epigraphic elegy; it allows to focus the pragmatic functions of elegy (telling, making and making act). The relationship between elegy and epic are also revisited: they are cognate genres, based on a common diction, which developed synchronically in the age of “hoplitic revolution”. Finally, a definition of elegy as a ‘genre’ is not recognisable without the elegiac form: but this is not restrictive but a sign of its vitality.

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