Les chants du corps
In the novels of Achilles Tatius and Longus the Sophist, two adolescent couples’ transition to adulthood and discovery of sexuality is punctuated by the myths of Syrinx and Echo. Because they rejected Pan, the two nymphs are dismembered; and while Syrinx becomes the god’s flute—an instrument used to...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | fra |
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Laboratoire d'Ethnologie et de Sociologie Comparative
2019-07-01
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| Series: | Ateliers d'Anthropologie |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/ateliers/11283 |
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| Summary: | In the novels of Achilles Tatius and Longus the Sophist, two adolescent couples’ transition to adulthood and discovery of sexuality is punctuated by the myths of Syrinx and Echo. Because they rejected Pan, the two nymphs are dismembered; and while Syrinx becomes the god’s flute—an instrument used to test virginity during an ordeal—Echo reproduces Pan’s sound by blowing into his flute. In fact, although transformed, those nymphs do not escape the goat-god. Through the homonymy of the word melē (both “limbs” and “chants”), and through a play of connections between the upper and lower body, the mouth and genitals, breathing and the sexual act, voices and moods, the music produced by the gods substitutes for coitus. And although Pan’s and Syrinx’s loves remain virginal, the sounds they emit are nevertheless not sterile: they fertilise herds. |
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| ISSN: | 2117-3869 |