Odisseo torna a Itaca: il grande viaggio della scrittura. Per un’analisi mediologica dei testi antichi

Abstract

The article proposes a mediological analysis applied to Homeric texts and in particular to the Odyssey. The study is based on three main phases: the reconstruction of the medial framework within which the poems are born and constitute themselves; the observation of the various representations of poetic figures read in a mediological sense; the interpretation of some textual metaphors which in turn express a radical medial conflict within Greek society between the 7th and 6th centuries. The Odyssey thus reveals a very powerful operation of re-mediation and integration between different media environments. The poem in fact witnesses the definitive passage from a phase in which writing supports and helps oral performance to one in which writing becomes a winning medium capable of incorporating the oral one, an operation that is the basis of Western literature over the centuries and even millennia.