Eros e Narciso, Poros e Penia (appunti sulle accezioni dell’amore nella letteratura greca)

The text deals with the terminology, the representations, the different “faces” and the different functions that love acquired in the classical (especially Greek) tradition: “force” and “form”, relational bond, cosmogonic power, psycho-physical disease, hermeneutical tool, existential self-realization, possibility of communication between human and divine world, model of political-social organization, and much more. The discussion crosses poetic and philosophical texts, starting from the archaic epic (the Iliad, Hesiod, the Hymn to Aphrodite), the archaic lyric poetry (Sappho, Ibychus, Mimnermus, Anacreon), “presocratic” thought (Prodicus), tragedy (Sophocles, Euripides), Plato’s prose (Symposium), Attic oratory (Demosthenes), Latin love poetry (Catullus) and scientific poetry (Lucretius), as well as later treatises (Plutarch’s Amatorium), the Song of Songs and the St. John’s Gospel, to end with Saint Augustine.