A incerta viagem dos mitos e das mulheres que neles vivem: a reinvenção de Helena

Abstract

Ancient Greeks based much of their identity and of their culture, and of their literature on a set of narratives, varied, multiform, able to include all human experience. To these narratives we usually call myths. It is on them that relies the strength and variety of Greek literature, from Homer to the tragedy, from the lyric poets to the historians and the philosophers. These were stories of incredible plasticity, constantly told and retold, always ready to take on new forms and different versions, in a constant dialogue with themselves. In this paper, I deal with this reinvention capacity, taking as example the figure of Helen (in Homer, in Stesichorus, in Euripides, in Herodotus), perhaps the one, from all the mythological characters, which saw her history written in more different ways. If today we continue to write and rewrite the Greek myths, this may happen perhaps because the Greeks themselves understood that was the right way of dealing with them, to reinvent them continuously.