Polyphème mangeant les compagnons d'Ulysse: Une image politique de Diderot
- Autores: Gianluigi Goggi
- Localización: La franc-maçonnerie: Dix-Hutiéme siécle 1987, 1987, ISBN 2130414532, págs. 339-346
- Idioma: francés
- Enlaces
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Resumen
The image of Polyphemus eating Ulysses' companions takes on, in Diderot's political language, a metaphorical connotation. This article, by comparing the three occurrences of the image, tries to discover its significance. This is clarified by a comparison with a passage in Locke's Second Treatise (§ 228) and a chapter in Rousseau's Social Contract (I, 4) : the Cyclops is a metaphor for Hobbes's Leviathan, used to criticize the latter's theory of an absolute state. In the intertextual relationship of Diderot's image with Locke's and Rousseau's texts, we can recognize the rhetorical figure called «metaphorical syllepsis ». The polysémie nature of the image is a good example of Diderot's antisystematic writing, sometimes based on «cue-signs » which summarize a whole argument for readers who can grasp their meaning.
