Abstract
Invoking the Nymphs allows us to introduce two specificities into the reflection on the categorization of the divine, the feminine and the plural, following the example of what Nicole Loraux had studied in her famous 1991 article, Qu'est-ce qu'une déesse ? She emphasized the Greek propensity for multiplying feminine figures by collectivities in the transparent name : the Charites, the Moires, the Hōrai, and so on. Are Nymphs part of this reflection? At first sight, the answer is positive : they are feminine, mostly plural, iconography often represents them in triads and their name is transparent, since it refers to the young girl of marriageable age or the young bride. But the obviousness of the name " Nymphs " is not quite of the same order as that of the divine " personifications " that project notions into the superhuman sphere. Thenumphē refers more to a status - that of the young girl on the eve of marriage or the young bride. It is the scope of this status, which has become divine, that needs to be examined. To this end, the occurrences in the Homeric epic enable us to draw up a profile of the Nymphs : goddesses, daughters of Zeus or other gods, they are immortal and live on earth, firmly anchored in the landscape ; they make unfamiliar territory hospitable, facilitating access for those who arrive and protecting those who reside there. TheHomeric Hymn to Aphrodite, infused with the problem of the boundaries between mortal and immortal beings, makes mountain and shrub nymphs entities that fall into neither category, placing them in the in-between. In the same work, the status of Ganymede, immortally young, and that of Tithonos, eternally aging, are further declensions of the variable actualizations of vital elements in the superhuman sphere. This dossier attests to the complexity of what it means to be a " god ", a designation whose fluidity the Nymphs attest to.
