ABSTRACT
As the history of reception shows, the meaning of literary texts is subject to continual change. Once released into the world, texts have no way back into the apparently secure harbour of authorial control over what they signify; as soon as they fall into the hands of recipients, any tutelage exercised by their producers ceases to apply. The earliest and most elaborate appearance of Proteus in Greek literature occurs in the so-called Telemachy, in the fourth book of the Odyssey. In the search for information about the whereabouts of his father, Telemachus comes to Sparta, where he meets Menelaus, who tells him about his own return home. A poetological reading of Proteus could see the figure as the symbolic embodiment of the creative remit of poetry, which is in principle infinite and may assume, in terms of both content and form, as many shapes as the mythic character and his potential for transformations.
