História e poesia: (comentários ao Proêmio tucidideano)

Abstract

Thucidides' contribution superseded that of Aristotle's discussion as to the specificities of poetry (myth) and history. For Tucidides, the narrative of the facts of the Peloponesean war distinguished itself clearly from literary rhetorics and laudatory practices tending to register the memory of the past. For him narrative is objective because it concerns the present in its coming to be. Narrative discourse distinguishes itself from myth in so far as it configures the realm of knowledge based on the testimony of a witness of the events, as opposed to mere memory of things past.