Thersite, une figure de la démesure ?

• Main Author: Corinne Jouanno
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Presses universitaires de Caen 2005-12-01
• Series: Kentron
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/kentron/1806

We may speak of Thersites’s hybris in Homer first because of his exceeding ugliness, characterized by a complete lack of balance and symmetry; secondly because of his shameless way of speaking; last but not least because, disregarding his own insignificance, he claims to speak Achilles’s heroic language. In subsequent rewritings and commentaries of the Homeric episode, stress is laid on Thersites’s buffoonery, untimely chattering, and aggressive attitude: he appears either as a seditious character, or as a braggart overestimating himself (cf. the Byzantine motif of the beauty contest against Nireus). As a matter of fact, very often, when Thersites’s name is used as a term of abuse in blame literature, the Homeric hero is quoted in order to accuse the opponent of imposture, and the kind of person most frequently called a new Thersites is the mock scholar who claims to be what he is not: Thersites’s hybris lies primarily there.