L’image du tigre dans la Thébaïde de Stace. Entre motifs traditionnels et agenda narratif

C. MAES, « L’image du tigre dans la Thébaïde de Stace. Entre motifs traditionnels et agenda narratif », Res Antiquae 12, Bruxelles, 2015.

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Statius’ Thebaid has often been studied from a structural or purely narrative standpoint. Lately, there has been a spike of interest about the poet’s stylistical merits and his, although sometimes minor, innovations on poetic traditions. This paper aims to show how Statius makes use of animal imagery, especially occurrences of the tiger, and encapsulates it in the course of his epic. The first part of this paper attempts to reconstruct the Romans’ perception of the tiger based on scientific and poetic literary works from the first centuries BC and AD. That investigation then allows us to understand which parts of the tiger’s stereotype Statius chooses to use to develop or contrast the idea of chaos, which pervades throughout the 12 books of the Thebaid.

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