The second international conference on Early Christian Literature, Late Antiquity and Byzantine Hagiography this year is on the theme of ‘Imitationes Christi and women martyrs’ starts in Valencia. Three of our researchers will be presenting! Koen De Temmerman is one of the keynote speakers, Julie Van Pelt is a member of the Comité Científico and is giving a paper, and Emma Huig is also presenting her research.
More information here.
Did Apuleius read ancient Greek love novels? The question is asked by Olivier Demerre (Ghent, Novel Saints), Rachel Bird and Ian Repath (Swansea, Kyknos) in a panel for the next Celtic Conference (Coimbra, 11–14/07). Speakers also include Nicolo D’Alconzo and Claire Jackson, members of our research group. Further information and the timetable can be found here. Looking forward to seeing you there!
We are delighted to invite you to a one-day workshop on The Reuse of Ancient and Late Antique Narratives in the Medieval Middle East and Beyond.
The workshop will be held in the Zaal August Vermeylen in Het Pand (Onderbergen 1, Gent, Belgium) on January 31st, 2023, and will be streamed online via Microsoft Teams.
The workshop focuses on the reception of ancient and late antique narratives across languages and cultures in the Middle Ages and brings together participants from Latin, Greek, Middle Eastern, Iranian, and Georgian studies.
Please register here by January 25th. Please email Mara Nicosia (mara.nicosia@ugent.be) if you have any queries.
Programme
9.00-9.10 Introduction
Work-in-progress session 1
9.10-9.30 Ingela Nilsson (Uppsala University): “Reuse, translation or reception of ancient texts? Methodological challenges”.
9.30-9.50 Lilli Hölzlhammer (Uppsala University): “Christianity vs Homer: the use of quotes and references in Symeon Seth’s Stephanites and Ichnelates”
9.50-10.10 Mara Nicosia (Ghent University): “Homer, Heliodorus and Pseudo-Callisthenes in Antony of Tagrit’s Rhetoric”
10.10-10.30 Discussion
10.30-11.00 Coffee
Lecture 1
11.00-11.40 Teddy Fassberg (Tel Aviv University): “Greek novels and narratives in Arabic”
Work-in-progress session 2
11.40-12.00 Uffe Holmsgaard Eriksen (University of Southern Denmark): “A broader case of reuse: epic and drama in Byzantine hymns”
12.00-12.20 Christian Høgel (Lund University): “The conditions of a Georgian-Greek translator. The Byzantinization of the Barlaam and Ioasaph story”
12.20-12.40 Discussion
12.40-14.10 Lunch
Lecture 2
14.10-14.50 İpek Hüner Cora (Boğaziçi University): “Becoming Ottoman: How an ancient tale gets native in the Ottoman literary world”
Work-in-progress session 3
14.50-15.10 Simon Ford (Ghent University): “An ancient story in a medieval manuscript: the Syriac riddle of the sphynx”
15.10-15.30 Ali B. Langroudi (Göttingen University): “Jesus’ bat among exegetical, apocryphal, and polemical echoes”
15.30-15.50 Lingli Li (Göttingen University): “Sanskrit narratives in Persianate India”
15.50-16.10 Discussion
16.10-16.40 Coffee
Lecture 3
16.40-17.20 Cameron Cross (University of Michigan): “Grammars of globality” (online)
17.20-17.30 Conclusion
Organisers: Mara Nicosia, Koen De Temmerman, Ingela Nilsson.
The workshop is funded both by the European Research Council through the Novel Echoes project hosted at Ghent University and by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond through the “Retracing Connections: Byzantine Storyworlds in Greek, Arabic, Georgian, and Old Slavonic (c. 950 – c. 1100)” programme hosted at Uppsala University.
Style matters. In his Rhetoric, Aristotle argues that a speaker should adopt a style that fits the context and circumstances of the speech. For each species of rhetoric, a different lexis is appropriate – political speakers cannot address their audience in the same way as epideictic orators and vice versa (Rh. 3.12.1). This workshop investigates the importance of style in political speeches. How did political speakers (broadly defined) employ stylistic features to achieve their rhetorical agendas?
The OIKOS Research group Ancient Rhetoric and Aesthetics, in cooperation with the International Society for the History of Rhetoric, cordially invites you to the workshop ‘The Politics of Style in Ancient Rhetoric and Oratory.’ The event takes place on the 9th of December in Ghent.
The workshop can be attended both physically and digitally. If you are interested in attending, please email Thierry.Oppeneer@UGent.be before the 2nd of December specifying whether you would like to participate in person or digitally and you will receive the necessary information.
Programme
12.30-13.30 Lunch
13.30-14.15 Christos Kremmydas (London): ‘Logoi Enteuktikoi and their Style in the Classical and Hellenistic Periods’
14.15-14.55 Olivier Demerre (Gent): ‘Stylistic Debates and Persuasion in Ancient Greek Novels’
14.55-15.10: Break
15.10-15.50 Thierry Oppeneer (Gent): ‘The Political Uses of Imperial Greek Rhetoric: Hermogenes’ Idea- and Stasis-Theory in the Popular Assembly’
15.50-16.30 Leanne Jansen (Leiden): ‘Ciceronian Words, Demosthenic Style: Cassius Dio’s Rendition of the Amnesty Speech of 44 BCE’
16.30-16.45: Break
16.45-17.30 Henriette van der Blom (Birmingham): ‘Elocutio in Roman Deliberative Speeches: Theory and Practice’ [Via Teams]
17.30 Drinks
The organisers and co-ordinators,
Casper de Jonge, Koen De Temmerman and Thierry Oppeneer
Dear all,
We are delighted to invite you to a one-day workshop organized by the Novel Echoes ERC-project at Ghent University, as part of the Ghent-Kent-Lille cross-border programme, taking place on November 18th 2022.
Ancient Concepts of Fiction and Narrative in the Imperial Period and Late Antiquity
Fiction Across Boundaries
18th November 2022
This is the fourth and final meeting of a series of workshops co-organised by the universities of Ghent, Kent, and Lille organized with the aim of generating new insights on the distinctions between true, false, and plausible narratives in the Mediterranean region 100-700 CE, a period of transition from pluralist polytheism to a Christian Empire and from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. This period saw a flourishing of different kinds of narratives with differing claims to truth. How do such attitudes to truth, fiction and lies and their interrelationship alter during this period and how is this manifest in the written narratives?
Following the previous meetings in Ghent (4th February), Kent (25th February) and Lille (13th May), this meeting aims to continue the discussions developed throughout the year about different manifestations of fiction across the imperial period into Late Antiquity and beyond, with the particular goal of breaking down boundaries between Christian and pagan approaches to fiction. By allowing for a diversity of voices and a breadth of approaches to this topic, these workshops aim to develop a more nuanced and a more generous conception of fiction in postclassical antiquity and to point towards new directions for future research on this theme.
Programme (all times CET):
9:45-10:30: Janet Downie (North Carolina, Chapel Hill): Longus as Theorist of Fictional Worlds: the Mythos of Chloe Reconsidered
10:30-11:15: Thomas Lorson (Lille): Mormo, the spirit of Lucianic fiction
11:15-11:45: break
11:45-12:30: Olivier Demerre (Ghent): (Sophistic) rhetoric and emotional control in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe
12:30-14:00: lunch
14:00-14:45: Benjamin De Vos (Ghent): The Moral and Metaliterary Depth of Mattidia’s Role in the Pseudo-Clementines: Christian Fiction and the Notion of ‘Dehellenization’
14:45-15:30: Charis Messis (Athens): Les îles désertes dans la fiction byzantine (du roman au récit hagiographique) – The desert islands in Byzantine fiction (from the novel to the hagiographic narrative) [in French]
15:30-16:00: break
16:00-16:45: Anna Lefteratou (Cambridge): Do we need the happy end? Eudocia’s Cyprian and Justa and Musaeus’ Hero and Leander.
16:45-17:00: break
17:00-18:00 Final Discussion
18:00: Drinks
The workshop will be held in-person at the Oude Infirmerie at Het Pand (Onderbergen 1, Gent), and will be streamed online via Microsoft Teams. Please register via this link by the end of Wednesday November 16th to register and receive the link for the online workshop. If you would like to attend the workshop in-person please contact us as soon as possible.
The workshop series is organized by Ruth Webb (Lille), Anne Alwis (Kent), and Koen De Temmerman (Ghent), with funding generously provided by the 3i research fund of the University of Lille and the European Research Council through the Novel Echoes project hosted at Ghent University.
Please don’t hesitate to get in touch (claire.jackson@ugent.be or nicolo.dalconzo@ugent.be) if you have any queries, and we hope to see many of you there.
All the best,
Dr. Claire Rachel Jackson
Postdoctoral Researcher, ‘Novel Echoes’ project
Blandijnberg 2
9000 Ghent
Belgium
Together with Professor Riccardo Contini, Mara Nicosia is the organizer of the atelier “Lexicologie et lexicographie syriaque” at the 13th Symposium Syriacum (Paris, 4th-9th July 2022). More information soon.
Dr Mara Nicosia will talk about ‘The Hellenistic Enkyklios Paideia (‘Circular Education’) in the Syriac World: The Role of Rhetoric in Shaping the ‘Classic’’ for the ERC-project PAIXUE at Edinburgh University. More information here.
Ancient Concepts of Fiction and Narrative in the Imperial Period and Late Antiquity
Fiction in Transition
Date: 4th February 2022
Participants may access the recordings of this workshop here.
We are delighted to invite you to a one-day online workshop organized by the Novel Echoes ERC-project at Ghent University, as part of the Ghent-Kent-Lille cross-border research programme, taking place on February 4th 2022.
This is the first of a series of three workshops co-organised by the universities of Ghent, Kent, and Lille, organized with the aim of generating new insights on the distinctions between true, false, and plausible narratives in the Mediterranean region 100-700 CE, a period of transition from pluralist polytheism to a Christian Empire and from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. This period saw a flourishing of different kinds of narratives with differing claims to truth. How do such attitudes to truth, fiction, and lies and their interrelationship alter during this period and how is this manifest in the written narratives?
This first workshop explores in particular texts from Late Antiquity as an inflection point for these kinds of concerns. Recent scholarship has done much to encourage a more diverse and productive approach to pagan and Christian literature rather than seeing the two as a strict dichotomy, but more work remains to be done on both the sheer breadth of underexplored texts from this period and the diversity of their engagement with questions of truth and falsehood. This workshop aims to explore this crucial transition period by looking at a variety of works which test the boundaries of such binary periodizations and open up a more nuanced understanding of fiction between and across such diverse narratives.
Please email Claire Rachel Jackson (Claire.Jackson@UGent.be) and/or Nicolò D’Alconzo (Nicolo.DAlconzo@UGent.be) to register and receive the link for the online workshop.
The poster may be downloaded here.
Programme: (All times given are CET)
9:45-10:00 Introduction
10:00-10:45 Claire Rachel Jackson (Ghent): ‘Fiction, Plausibility, and Miracles in Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Macrina’
10:45-11:30 Rachel Bird (Swansea): ‘From the Divine to the Ridiculous? Narrative Technique and the Suspension of Disbelief in The Life of St Mary of Egypt’
11:30-12:00 Break
12:00-12:45 Jason König (St Andrews): ‘Autopsy and truth in The History of the Monks in Egypt, Palladius’ Lausiac History, and Theodoret’s Religious History’
12:45-14:00 Break
14:00-14:45 Katherine Krauss (Oxford): ‘Fiction in the Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri’
14:45-15:30 Nicola Schmid-Dümmler (Zürich): ‘Revisiting Musaeus and Achilles Tatius: Seductive narratorial voices’
15:30-16:00 Break
16:00-16:45 Julie Van Pelt (Ghent): ‘Journeys Between History and Fiction: the Life of Makarios the Roman’
16:45-17:30 Stephen Trzaskoma (New Hampshire): ‘Praeparatio Martyriologica: Displays of Truth and Novelistic Virtue by Sts. Kerkyra and Romanos’
17:30-18:00 Round up discussion
18:00-19:00 Virtual drinks reception
The next workshop will be organized at the University of Kent on February 25th 2022, with details to be circulated in the near future.
The workshop series is organized by Ruth Webb (Lille), Anne Alwis (Kent), and Koen De Temmerman (Ghent), with funding generously provided by the 3i research fund of the University of Lille.
On 27th January 2022, Mara Nicosia will speak online on ‘Syriac monastic schools and the teaching of rhetoric‘ for the Centre for Research on Ancient Civilizations, Krakow.
More information can be found here.
Van Barack Obama’s “Yes, we can!” tot de oneliners van Bart De Wever; van Donald Trumps “big, beautiful wall” tot de vaak bedenkelijke manieren waarop de voorbije jaren het Brexit-debat in het VK is gevoerd: speech is “hot”, en de kunst van het overtuigen geniet de laatste tijd hernieuwde aandacht in binnen- en buitenland. Overtuiging werkt aan de hand van eeuwenoude technieken en concepten die reeds in de oudheid werden getheoretiseerd en gesystematiseerd. Zij zijn het onderwerp van de cursus Antieke retoriek aan de UGent. In het kader van dat vak nodigen we de heer Herman Van Rompuy, minister van staat en Emeritus Voorzitter van de Europese Raad, uit voor een gastcollege over Retoriek in de politieke arena. Hij zal hierin spreken over de efficiëntie van oude retorische technieken in een nieuw tijdperk.
Dit evenement is open voor het publiek, maar gratis registratie is verplicht.
