Boucliers palimpsestes

In this paper we want to show how the epic narrative uses the description of a shield for a reflexive aim: the shield becomes therefore the occasion for a kind of metadescription. We chose the Aspis (once wrongly attributed to Hesiod, actually a later text) because the imperfections of this imitation of the more successful shield of Achilleus in Iliad XVIII show - maybe better than the model did - that the Epic text describing a hero's shield as a God's masterpiece symbolically says the following: Epic is a literary way of creating a world as only gods can do. Vergil will later begin his own description of Aeneas's shield by saying that it is impossible to describe: "non enarrabile". The Aspis brings to light the problem of reality and illusion which is one of the fundamental problems of greek art (and of art in general...): thus we can see how this problem was already present in Homer's description in Iliad XVIII. Likewise, Georges Devallet shows that Silius Italicus, in his description of Hannibal's shield, gives the first place to the ideological problem, which was already present in Vergil's and Homer's description. We conclude that Homer's and Vergil's success can be explained by a reflection on the nature of representation of reality in art, on self-representation of the narrative through the fiction of artistic creation, and on the relation between the subject of the representation and the ideological meaning of the Epies (as shield constitutes the emblematic image of the hero who will protect himself behind it). The ideal balance reached by both Homer and Vergil is broken in our two examples, the Aspis and the Punica.Létoublon Françoise, Devallet Georges. Boucliers palimpsestes. In: L'Univers épique : rencontres avec l'Antiquité classique. Tome II. Besançon : Université de Franche-Comté, 1992. pp. 173-187. (Annales littéraires de l'Université de Besançon, 460