The myth of Helen in Homer: the figurative opening

Abstract

The multifaceted figure of Helen in Homer's Iliad not only opens the representations of this ambiguous character in Western literary tradition, but also guarantees to the bard's poem the engendering of the differing and diverging retractions of the Spartan. Victim of the fights, cause of discord, confined to the female space, center of male attentions, deceived by the other characters, matter of her own penalization, Helen is made up of different paradoxes which are reiterated in each scene or in each mention of her name in the Homeric textual embroidering. Precisely through this antithetical game we try to defend the existence of several Helens in the Iliad, who concomitantly create, disallow and recreate her figure.