Enchanted reception: Religion and the supernatural in medieval Troy narratives

Date: Thursday-Friday, 3-4 June 2021

Zoom link

Zoom-link for both days of the conference: https://ugent-be.zoom.us/j/93804708161?pwd=eitGa1d4Y3MyYi9wRlFmajU2c3Z3UT09. You will need a zoom-account to join. If you are experiencing problems joining, try the following:

If you are still experiencing issues, please email Evelien Bracke at evelien.bracke@ugent.be

Programme

Enchanted Reception is a two-day workshop with the aim of exploring the place of enchantment, myth, and religion in both Eastern and Western medieval narratives about Troy, or narratives that are influenced by motifs related or parallel to the narrative of the Trojan war. Together with scholars specialising in the different language traditions of medieval literature, we aim to explore the following questions from a transnational approach:  
  
•    How did contemporary (e.g. literary and socio-cultural) developments influence medieval adaptations of the supernatural and pagan religion in medieval Troy narratives?  
•    What role does the Troy motif play in other literary works?  
•    How are rationalization and “Christianization” used to deal with the medieval unease evoked by certain aspects of ancient mythology?  
•    From a comparative perspective, how can we map such processes transnationally, e.g. in the different language and literature traditions of the medieval world?  
•    How do these questions engage with themes such as gender, sexuality, ethnicity and cross-cultural connections?  

 

All times are CET. 

Please click on the presenter name for the abstract, on the title for the handout.

 

Day 1

13.00-13.30    Registration – please register in time so any troubleshooting can take place before the event starts.

13.30-13.45    Welcome by Ellen Söderblom Saarela and Tine Scheijnen (practical information) and Koen De Temmerman (UGent; coördinator of the Novel Echoes project)

 

Session 1          Enchanting Amazons

Chair: Adam Goldwyn

13.45-14.15     Ellen Söderblom Saarela (Ghent University): “Amazoneises, puceles corteises”: Interpreting the Amazon’s Place in Courtly Romance

14.15-14.45     Hilke Hoogenboom (Leiden University): Femme Fatale: Penthesilea and the Last Stand of Chivalry in Guido delle Colonne’s Historia Destructionis Troiae

14.45-15.15     Allison Treese (University of Leicester): “O flower of chivalry”: Christine de Pizan and the Christianization of Amazons

15.15-15.45     Discussion

 

15.45    16.00    Break

 

Session 2          Troy in the New World

Chair: Nicola McDonald

16.00-16.30     Megan Moore (University of Missouri): The Mediterranean & the Translation of Emotional Communities: Troy & Legacies of Heroism

16.30-17.00     Susannah Wright (Harvard University): Troy Translated, Troy Transformed: Case Studies in Medieval Celtic Literature

17.00-17.30      Tine Scheijnen (Ghent University): Facing the Other: Medieval Reconceptions of Trojan Identity

17.30-18.00    Discussion

                       

18.00-19.00    Reception! Join us in this Wonder room: https://www.wonder.me/r?id=ab8ad133-2b60-44a1-8aa3-5f7b4e1720d0

 

Day 2

Session 3          Reshapings of Troy

Chair: Evelien Bracke

13.30-14.00    José Miguel de Toro (Catholic University of Concepción): The War of Troy in Encyclopedic Literature: the Case of Lambert’s Liber floridus

14.00-14.30    Marco Brunetti (Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max-Planck-Insititut-für-Kunstgeschichte): Figural and Literary Functional Recoveries of the Trojan Myths from

                       Late Antiquity to Renaissance Age

14.30-15.00    Sophie Schoess (University of St Andrews): Objects of Worship: The Place of Idols in Mediaeval Troy Narratives (click here for presentation)

15.00-15.30    Discussion

                       

15.30-15.45    Break

                       

Session 4          Byzantine Enchantments

Chair: Megan Moore

15.45-16.15    Adam Goldwyn (North Dakota State University): The Sexual Politics of Myth: Rewriting and Unwriting Women in Byzantine Accounts of the Trojan War

16.15-16.45    Baukje van den Berg (Central European University): Supernatural Rhetoric and Gendered Eloquence: Eustathios and Tzetzes on Hermes, Athena, and the

                     Muses

16.45-17.15    Agnese Fontana (University of Genoa): What If King David Had Fought at Troy? The Trojan Narrative in Byzantine World Chronicles (VI-XII Century):

                     Religious, Historical and Political Issues

17.15-17.45    Discussion

                       

17.45-18.00   End discussion

Chair: Ellen and Tine

 

For more information, please email Dr Tine Scheijnen (tine.scheijnen@ugent.be) or Dr Ellen Söderblom Saarela (ellen.soderblomsaarela@ugent.be).  
This workshop is organized as part of and supported by the ERC project Novel Echoes and the FWO project The romance between Greece and the west (see https://www.novelsaints.ugent.be/).