Espaços concebidos pela mente

Abstract

‘If I could review in dreams my fatherly house and the city…’ (E., IT 452 sq.) cries out the chorus of the Greek captives in Euripides’ Iphigenia among the Tauris. The transposition of the physical, real space to the world of dreams and visions waking visions, i.e., to a psychological, subjective space, allows us illustrate both the cares and longings of figures from the Homeric epics or of the Greek tragedies (cf. Od. 19.581, 21.79, E., IT 452 ss., E., HF 943 ss.). As well as revealing, symbolically way, premonitory elements related to the human faith (cf. E., IT. 42 ss.), or still, in a metaphoric language, satirize the politicians’ behaviour during Aristophanes’ time, in pieces written by the comedian (cf. V. 31 ss.). The real spaces to which the dreams and visions point to contemplate the generic references to the city, the reference to a place particularly associated to power, the royal palace, such as Ithaca, or before, the one of Argos, and the amusing description of the public places of the polis. This study is intended to consider, from a literary perspective, the motives and the consequences of this connection between the physical and the psychological space, taking into consideration the context in which the afore mentioned examples occur, as well as the time in which they take place.