Referential Fiction and Poetic Ritual: Towards a Pragmatics of Myth (Sappho 17 and Bacchylides 13)

Abstract

Myth does not exist, particularly in Ancient Greece, if not through poetic forms with a strong pragmatic dimension. With its ritual aspect, the song establishes a strong relationship between the “fiction” of the heroic story, recreated by the poet, and the present situation of the performance of the poem itself. Sappho 17, despite its fragmentary state, and the long Epinician 13 by Bacchylides are good examples for the historical and symbolic efficiency of the stories of the heroic past of the civic community revisited on a given ritual occasion, with its social, religious and cultural implications. These melic poems, considered from an anthropological point of view in their musical performance, are means for a permanent recreation of a cultural memory, between “myth” and “history”.