Der Heldenkörper in Szene gesetzt
Die Muskeln des Hercules in Epos und Elegie
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.34679/thersites.vol11.182Keywords:
Hercules, Roman epic, love elegy, body, heroism, masculinityAbstract
Taking its cue from the portrayal of Hercules as muscleman in both films and ancient sculpture this article turns to poetry as a verbal art and examines when and how the hero's body comes into focus in Roman epic and elegy. It is argued that moments of crisis contrasting Hercules’ state in a given situation to his former heroic achievements give rise to representations of his body, while epic fight scenes rather draw attention to the bodies of his inferior opponents. The body is described through references to different body parts, qualified by attributes as masculine in elegiac contexts. A somewhat exotic word as tori suffices to highlight the hero’s muscular body.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2020 Petra Schierl
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with thersites agree to the following terms:
- Publishing in thersites is free of any charges.
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication.
- Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author, so long as the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. The journal is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. More information about this license is available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
