Trouble dans le(s) genre(s) : le discours d’Atalante à son fils dans la Thébaïde (IV, 309-344)

• Main Author: Anne Sinha
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Anthropologie et Histoire des Mondes Antiques 2012-05-01
• Series: Cahiers Mondes Anciens
• Subjects: Atalanta; catalogue; enunciation; epics; gender; Thebaid
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/mondesanciens/716

Atalanta’s speech, in which she refuses to let her son go against Thebes, is at the same time an interruption and a closure of the long catalogue of leaders in Thebaid’s book 4. The character replaces both her son and the enunciator of the catalogue. She appears to be a better warrior than her son, in a comparison developed with Virgil’s Camilla, of which she is a better substitute. Her speech also covers the voice of the enunciator of the catalogue, which is traditionally a closed place. Her identity as a woman and a warrior allows her to denunciate the weakness of her son and, more importantly, it is a way for Statius to say that a real heroism can’t exist in a war between brothers. Statius uses this woman's speech, situated in a strategic place of the epic, to express his ideological break with the tradition of the genre.