PENELOPE'S WEB. FORMS AND LIMITATION OF KNOWLEDGE IN ARCHAIC GREECE

How does a society manage its knowledge? Which mechanisms does it develop to accelerate or, on the contrary, limit the production of knowledge? With the digital revolution, modern society appears obsessed by the need to collect and accumulate all possible information on every matter. What may be said of an opposite society established upon the strict regulation of knowledge and not on its steady increase? The Greece of the aoidoi (the oral poets of Ancient Greece) provides a remarkable paradigm to dwell, by way of contrast, upon the digital revolution. Reviewing certain passages of the Odyssey, we will see how ancient oral poetry was also a tool to control and limit production of knowledge. This study discovers, within the history of a couple of metaphors and mythical designs, valuable tools to measure, amid Penelope's and the Internet's woven webs, the divide between two opposite models of society.