Trasposizione scenica della diegesi epica: il meccanismo dell’agnizione nelle Coefore, nell’Elettra di Sofocle e nell’Ifigenia in Tauride

This paper presents a structural analysis of the ‘recognition scene’ – one of the numerous type-scene common to both epics and tragedy – with the purpose of examining how the same mythical themes are adapted to two different genres. My case-study concerns Odysseus’ recognition in Odyssey in comparison with Orestes’ recognition in tragedy. In the epic telling the long digressive story of Odysseus’ scar and of the boar hunt aims to procrastinate the hero’s identification by his old nurse Eurykleia and to increase the audience’s suspense, whereas in Aeschylos’ Libation Bearers, Sophocles’ Electra and Euripides’ Iphigenia among the Taurians, notwithstanding the exponential increase of the evidences testifying Orestes’ identity, recognition is achieved through many questions and doubts about their validity. The deductive reasoning which characterizes the three dramatic texts contrasts with the intuitive recognition of the Odyssey. The monologic voice of epic narrative is thus broken up in excited stichomythic dialogue answering to the new performative Athenian context where rhetoric and public
debate are rapidly developing.