Érudition et humour dans les idylles bucoliques de Théocrite

Abstract

Learning and Humor in Theocritus’ Bucolic Idylls – In his bucolic Idylls, Theocritus enjoys playing upon the complicity of his reader but also misleading him, in a humorous way, which links scholarly collusion with intellectual challenge. Sometimes he draws his reader in closer, by looking amusingly upon his characters, mythological shepherds, placed in an antiheroic situation or lowly herdsmen raised to the rank of epic heroes or even of poets. Sometimes he gibes at the learning of his reader, enjoying the dashing of the reader’s expectations, testing his shrewdness and analytic subtlety, as in the songs of Lycidas and Simichidas, before resuming his former complicity with him, with a knowing and sparkling smile, like that of Lycidas. This playing upon learning and humor provides a source of intellectual pleasure. It is at the root of the bucolic genre itself and it nourishes poetry, whose practice provides ἀσυχία in a cathartic, aesthetic and philosophical way.