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Criteria of Truth: Representations of Truth and Falsehood in Hellenistic Poetry

Kathleen Kidder

  • Éditeur ‏ : ‎ Harvard University Press (30 mai 2023)
  • Broché ‏ : ‎ 262 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0674292421
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0674292420

Amidst conflicting information and personal experiences, how can someone distinguish between truth and falsehood? Criteria of Truth: Representations of Truth and Falsehood in Hellenistic Poetry tackles this fundamental question through a study of five Hellenistic poems dated to the third and second centuries BCE: Aratus’s Phaenomena, Nicander’s Theriaca, Callimachus’s Aetia, Apollonius of Rhodes’s Argonautica, and Lycophron’s Alexandra.

Situating these poetic works in their intellectual and literary milieu, Kathleen Kidder applies the philosophic concept of the criterion of truth, arguing that each poetic persona represents a different criterion for interrogating truth and falsehood. Moreover, by analyzing the poems’ allusions, myths, and poetic language, Kidder demonstrates how this poetry can encapsulate the tensions not only between truth and falsehood, but also between order and chaos, certainty and doubt, clarity and obscurity, seen and unseen, and being and seeming.

Auteur/autrice

  • Christophe CUSSET

    Ancien élève de l'ENS Fontenay/ Saint-Cloud. Agrégé de Lettres classiques. Docteur ès Lettres (Université Lyon II). Professeur de littérature grecque à l'ENS de Lyon.


OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Christophe CUSSET (29 août 2023). Criteria of Truth: Representations of Truth and Falsehood in Hellenistic Poetry. Hellenistic Poetry Newsletter. Consulté le 4 décembre 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/phj0


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