Homère rhétorique

Homer’s poems stand at the beginning of Greek literature and such a place has given the Poet, since Antiquity, the status of a « master of all sciences ». Since Homer is also present at every level of education, his authority rises above poetry and the Poet becomes paradoxically a model in the art of eloquence. Teachersand scholars, in Greece as in Rome, read and commented on Homeric epics using rhetorical categories. This book aims to study rhetorical reception of Homer in Antiquity, shifting from creative mimesis of the Homeric text to critical interpretation. The readings of Homer provided by scholia, rhetorical treatises and critical monographies on the Poet and his epics are at the core of the studies gathered in this volume. This rhetorical exegesis of Homer, which lasted during all Antiquity and was revived in the Renaissance, contributes to the birth and the development of an Ancient literary criticism.