La Cassandre dracontienne, clé de lecture Vandale ? Une étude de la figure de Cassandre dans le De raptu Helenae et l'Orestis tragoedia

Details

Supervisors

Kachuck, Aaron

Faculty

Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres

Degree label

Master [120] en langues et lettres anciennes et modernes, à finalité spécialisée: cultures latine et française du Moyen Age et des Temps Modernes

Abstract

enThis paper discusses the figure of Cassandra in the corpus of Dracontius, a Latin author who lived in Carthage in the 5th century. Two of this author's poems deal with the figure of Cassandra, and no study has been produced that examines this connection. However, although she may seem secondary at first glance, Cassandra proves to be a central Dracontian figure for interpreting the poem. The aim is to determine the link, through the study of Cassandra in her context, between Dracontius' historical context and his poems, De raptu Helenae and Orestis tragoedia. To this end, this work consists of three main chapters, preceded by an introduction and a state of the art review. The first examines the life of the author, Dracontius, in his historical context, the Vandal period. The aim of this chapter is to understand how the author relates to his context. The second chapter traces the tradition of the figure of Cassandra through the centuries, from Homer to the authors of late antiquity. The third chapter analyses the two aforementioned poems in detail to understand Cassandra's role in their narrative and the link between them and to determine to what extent the figure of Cassandra serves as a key to understanding both texts from a Vandal perspective. We have seen that Dracontian Cassandra is indeed associated with the figure of the poet, creating an initial parallel between literature and reality. Once this has been established, each element adds to the parallel, and all of them help us to understand the message conveyed by the poet.