Du paysage quotidien à l'espace poétique

This book examines, from a thoroughly literary perspective, the matter of cult places in Greek and Roman Antiquity. It studies how sacred spaces are depicted in Greek and Latin poetry, from archaic times to the beginning of the second century ad. Each paper endeavors to emphasize the specificities of poetry when dealing with those cult places, be they architectural or natural spaces, which were part of the everyday landscape of ancient people. The first group of papers looks at the role played by sanctuaries in epic poetry, from Homer to Valerius Flaccus; they highlight the variety of meaning that allusions to or descriptions of temples and sacred spaces celebrated or perverted. A second section is given over to theatre; it asks questions such as the role played by the altar, as both a real place in stage architecture and a literary space. While it is a place of shelter for supplicants, it can become a place of impiety in tragedy or derision in comedy. A third group of papers studies the material, architectural, and ideological aspects of sanctuaries: physical data (i.e. construction materials, decorative and iconographical schemes, etc.) are transformed by poems to echo their ideological setting. Lastly, in a fourth part, sacred spaces are no longer considered as public spaces, but private ones, specific to each poet’s subjective writing, especially in lyrical or elegiac poetry; sanctuaries may then be subject to metapoetical elaboration, with generic or aesthetic claims.