Renaissance de la poésie didactique: Homère philosophe et Empédocle poète

Resum

During the Renaissance, humanists rediscover the original texts of Greek philosophical poems as well as Lucretius' famous De Rerum Natura. Two questions already raised by the Ancients become for them an object of passionate inquiry: Was Homer really the first philosopher? and Was Empedocles a philosopher or a poet? The Florentine humanist Angelo Poliziano, for example, who during the 1480s devoted his university teachings to the Homeric corpus, develops the theme of Homer's omniscience. Later, during the second half of the 16th century, the Parisian publisher Henri Estienne prints a volume of Greek epic poets, followed by an anthology of Greek philosophical poetry. In refuting the claim that Empedocles, for not having composed a narrative fable should not really count as a poet, Estienne significantly bolsters the legitimacy of scientific poetry. In this way, Renaissance debates over Homer's omniscience and Empedocles' status amongst poets greatly facilitated the emergence of a new didactic poetry during the period.