Luto e banquete no canto IV da Odisseia (97–226)

Abstract

This essay is an attempt to give an interpretation to the relations of opposition between grief and banquet at the wedding reception of Menelaus’ daughter and son’s marriages in Sparta (in the beginning of Odyssey’s book iv), which becomes an occasion of hospitality for Telemachus and Pisistratus, that have just arrived from Pylos, an occasion where, during a conversation with the still unknown guests, the Menelaus’ recollection of his dead companions in the Trojan War and, particularly, of the lost Odysseus leads Telemachus (followed by the others) to weep and cry, which is typical behavior of grief but inappropriate for that occasion.