One of Propertius' most distinctive features is the emphasis laid on the pleasure stemming from the eyes. He is particularly fond of visualising everything and everyone, what the French call 'tempérament visuel', or, using the vocabulary of ancient rhetoric, 'enargeia', 'evidentia' which operates in the past through the memory and in the present through the sight. This paper aims, in the first place, to illustrate this pattern, giving particular attention to all the artistic masterpieces quoted in Propertius' poetry and discussing their presence in his work. We examine then Propertius' choice of bestowing new life on paintings and statues by evoking the complex world of mythology, either in the form of a catalogue or through an 'ekphrasis'; all the myths, however, appear to be closely linked with the poet, inasmuch as they allow him to resort to a plenty of allusions.
Properzio tra scrittura e visualità. Un contributo alla genesi delle immagini in un poeta augusteo.
SANTINI, Carlo
2014
Abstract
One of Propertius' most distinctive features is the emphasis laid on the pleasure stemming from the eyes. He is particularly fond of visualising everything and everyone, what the French call 'tempérament visuel', or, using the vocabulary of ancient rhetoric, 'enargeia', 'evidentia' which operates in the past through the memory and in the present through the sight. This paper aims, in the first place, to illustrate this pattern, giving particular attention to all the artistic masterpieces quoted in Propertius' poetry and discussing their presence in his work. We examine then Propertius' choice of bestowing new life on paintings and statues by evoking the complex world of mythology, either in the form of a catalogue or through an 'ekphrasis'; all the myths, however, appear to be closely linked with the poet, inasmuch as they allow him to resort to a plenty of allusions.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
