"Une grotte qu’il faut peindre bien romantique". Epillio e ecfrasi nei frammenti poetici di André Chénier

Abstract

Since the posthumous publication of his poetic work in 1819, André Chénier has often tended to be regarded as a spiritual father of French Romanticism. Characteristically, Théophile Gautier referred to the philhellenism of Chénier and to the fragmentary nature of his work as anticipatory of a new era in literature. While reaffirming Chénier’s adherence to the aesthetics of 18th century neo-classicism, this article seeks to link the experimental character of «Le Banquet des Satyres» – its form as a fragmentary ‘prosimetric’ sketch, its generic hybridity, acoustic and visual illusionism, interplay of idyllic and tragic tonalities – with Virgil’s Sixth Eclogue as a study in the ‘implicit poetics’ of the Hellenistic and neoteric epyllion.