Seminar

The questing Charites of Theocritus
between folkloric motifs and erudite allusiveness

February 21, 2025 11:00 a.m.

CNR-ISMed
Convention Hall Polo Umanistico del CNR
Via Cardinale Guglielmo Sanfelice, 8
VI floor
Naples

Remote participation via Teams

Poster

Critics have long been concerned with the influence of traditional folk songs (both ‘lyrical’ and purely bucolic) on Theocritical compositions. This influence is particularly evident in the portrayal of the ragged and beggarly Charites with which Idyll 16 (Charites or Hieron) opens, in which Theocritus evidently draws on the so-called ‘quest songs’ (or Bettelgedichte), a popular strand of songs actually performed by questors who on specific occasions went around the houses collecting offerings.

From this repertoire, Theocritus retrieves not only generically the image of the quest for money carried out house by house, but also specific motifs with which he sketches the condition of poverty in which the Charites found themselves. Moreover, the surviving literary testimonies that refer to the same popular vein show how the image of the mendicant and itinerant poet was associated since antiquity with Homer himself (Epigr. Hom. 14 West = [Hes.] fr. 302 Merkelbach-West apud Vit. Hom. 32; Epigr. Hom. 15 West = Carm. pop. 1 Diehl2 apud Vit. Hom. 33).

The Theocritean choice to refer here to a folkloric tradition is particularly suggestive if one considers that the idyll is proposed as a reflection on celebratory poetry and is itself configured as a proposal to compose an encomium, thus recalling at the same time a poetic tradition of a very different genre and style, such as that of the choral lyricism of Pindar, Simonides and Bacchilides.

Programme

INTRODUCES AND MODERATES
Andrea Ercolani
CNR-ISMed

SPEAKER
Vittoria Vairo
University of Naples ‘Federico II

FINAL DISCUSSION

Seminar within PRIN 2022: Folklore and oral traditions in the Greek culture. From the Archaic to the Hellenistic period

ORGANISED BY
CNR-ISMed

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Andrea Ercolani, Laura Lulli, Riccardo Palmisciano, Alessandra Piergrossi, Livio Sbardella

HOW TO PARTICIPATE
The conference is open to the public, subject to availability of places.
You can participate remotely on the Teams platform

INFO AND CONTACTS
andrea.ercolani@ismed.cnr.it
www.ismed.cnr.it