IMAGERIE MYTHICO-POÉTIQUE, PHILOSOPHIE ET RELIGION DANS LE PROÈME DE PARMÉNIDE
MYTHOPOEIC IMAGERY, PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION IN PARMENIDES’S PROEMIUM

Summary/Abstract: Scholars often noted that in the Proemium – which is conceived as a myth – Parmenides borrowed certain themes from the mythopoeic imagery of the time. He uses stereotypes and lieux communs, proceeds by analogy, reinterprets a series of myths and symbolic elements, while unfolding a narrative that is his own. Far from being simple artifices, these semantic and thematic-figurative borrowings, together with the way in which they are employed in the poem, indicate Parmenides’s intention to break with the pre-existing tradition by articulating his own approach and the principles that underlie it. For the sake of discerning Parmenides’s relationship to the preceding tradition, I will examine in detail the mythical motifs that are discernible in the Proemium in order to establish their individual function, meaning, and connotations. Albeit without a doubt inspired by the discourse of the poietaí and other “masters of truth”, Parmenides nevertheless aims at an independent adaptation and reinterpretation of elements borrowed from the mythopoeic imagery. In this fashion and like a veritable “myth-maker”, he departs from the traditional paradigm and proposes a new approach that competes with the pre-established one. When not appropriating already existing myths, he deliberately created others to explain better his philosophical position. Namely, his approach is derived from an understanding of philosophy as quest for the absolute knowledge of a truth that is essentially divine. In this way, the noetic quest for wisdom comes to replace the mythical voyage, both corporeal and spiritual, to exotic places of mythical geography.

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