Walking the Wire. Latin and Greek Late Antique Poetry in Dialogue

Organization: Berenice Verhelst and Tine Scheijnen

The Walking the Wire project springs from the general observation that there is very little interaction between scholars working on Late Antique Greek and Late Antique Latin poetry. Although similar problems and questions arise in research on both poetical traditions, a real dialogue between these two scholarly fields is still conspicuously missing. It is our conviction that a stronger dialogue is needed between the two fields to come to a better understanding, not only of the shared developments, but also of the subtle differences between the two traditions, which are now often overlooked or simplified because of the lack of any comparative studies.

The bilingual focus of our project and the book which will be its result is chosen explicitly to open up the dialogue between the two fields and explore the possibilities this creates to come to a better understanding of Late Antique poetry. It aims to shed new light on literary developments that can or have been regarded as typical for Late Antiquity and on the poetic and aesthetic ideals that affect individual poems from this period. Only by analyzing this poetry from a bilingual perspective is it possible to correct common misunderstandings about the extent to which certain literary phenomena are typically “Late Antique”, “Latin” or “Greek”.

8 September 2016

• 09.30     Arrival & Coffee

• 10.00     Berenice Verhelst and Tine Scheijnen (Ghent): Introduction

MORNING SESSION. PART ONE: POETRY IN TRANSFORMATION

Chaired by Kristoffel Demoen (Ghent)

• 10.30:    Philip Hardie (Cambridge) – Respondent: Sophie Schoess
  Metamorphosis and Mutability in Late Antique Epic

• 11.15:    Helen Kaufmann (Oxford) – Respondent: Silvio Bär
  The Implosion of Poetic Genre in Late Antiquity

LUNCH (12.00-13.30)

AFTERNOON SESSION. PART TWO: POETRY AND THE WORLD OF LATE ANTIQUITY

Chaired by Jacqueline Klooster (Groningen)

• 13.30:    Aaron Pelttari (Edinburgh) – Respondent: Laura Miguélez Cavero
  Speaking from the Margins: Late Antique Paratexts from around the Mediterranean

• 14.15:    Sophie Schoess (Oxford) – Respondent: Cosetta Cadau
  Objects of the Lusting Gaze: Viewing Women as Works of Art in Late Antique Poetry

• 15:00:   Gianfranco Agosti (Roma Sapienza) – Respondent: Klazina Staat (Ghent)
  Centre and periphery in “everyday poetry” of Late Antiquity

COFFEE BREAK (15.440-16.30)

Chaired by Koen De Temmerman (Gent)

• 16.30:    Calum Maciver (Edinburgh) – Respondent: Katerina Carvounis
  The Vertical and Horizontal Axes: the Limits of Alexandrian Poetics in a Rhetorical Context?

• 17.15:    Cosetta Cadau (Dublin) – Respondent: Philip Hardie
  Describing Female Beauty in Late Antiquity. Aphrodite in Claudian, Colluthus and Nonnus.

 

RECEPTION (18.00-19.00)

CONFERENCE DINNER (19.30 – Restaurant: Vier Tafels)

9 September 2016

• 30:    Coffee

MORNING SESSION. PART THREE: SHAPING AND RESHAPING THE PAST

Chaired by Mary Whitby (Oxford)

• 10.00:    Marcelina Gilka (Exeter) – Respondent: Helen Kaufmann
  “Antehomeric” Traditions and Innovations. Dracontius’ Latin and Colluthus’ Greek Abduction of Helen

• 10.45:    Katerina Carvounis & Sophia Papaioannou (Athens) – Respondent: Marcelina Gilka
  Alternative Typhonomachies in Ovid and Nonnus. Revisiting the Burning Issue of Latin Influence on Greek Poetry in Late Antiquity

• 11.30:    Silvio Bär (Oslo) – Respondent: Sophia Papaioannou
  The Past, a Foreign Country? The Recollection and Construction of Literary Canons by Greek and Roman Epigrammatists in the Fourth Century A.D.

LUNCH (12.15-14.00)

AFTERNOON SESSION. PART FOUR: REINVENTING EPIC

Chaired by Marco Formisano (Ghent)

• 14.00:    Brian Sowers (Brooklyn) – Respondent: Aaron Pelttari
  Common Texts, (Un)Common Aesthetics: the Greek and Latin Cento in Dialogue

• 14.45:    Laura Miguélez Cavero (Oxford) – Respondent: Emma Greensmith
  Internal Audiences in the New Testament Epics of Nonnus and Juvencus

COFFEE BREAK (15.30-16.00)

Chaired by Wim Verbaal (Ghent)

• 16.00:    Emma Greensmith (Cambridge) – Respondent: Brian Sowers
  Saying the Other. Allegory and Identity in Quintus of Smyrna and Late Antique Concepts of Personification

• 16.45:    Berenice Verhelst (Ghent) – Respondent: Calum Maciver
  A “Revival” of the “Epyllion” as a “Genre”? Genre Awareness in Short Epic Narrative from Late Antiquity

• 17.30: Concluding Round Table – chaired by Tine Scheijnen and Berenice Verhelst