Archives: Events

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.

The Pseudo-Clementine Homilies: a philosophical and rhetorical novel from Late Antiquity

Keynote speakers:

Dominique Côté (University of Ottawa/Université d’Ottawa)

Meinolf Vielberg  (Universität Jena)

 

Other confirmed speakers

William Adler (North Carolina University)

Patricia Duncan (Texas Catholic University)

George Gereby (Central European University)

Tobias Nicklas (Universität Regensburg)

 

Conference Aims

This conference wants to bring together four fields of study: the ancient novel, ancient philosophy, ancient rhetoric, and Jewish-Christian narrative. We aim to study one Greek novel from different perspectives: the so-called Pseudo-Clementine Homilies.

The conference sets out to explore the intellectual context of this novel and the ways in which the Homilies had an impact on readers in Late Antiquity. By approaching the Homilies as a philosophical and rhetorical work in its own right, the conference seeks not only to improve our understanding of the Homilies as a late ancient novel, but also the role of philosophy and rhetoric in the religious narratives of Late Antiquity. We welcome studies on

1. the role of philosophy in the Homilies: e.g. the presentation of Christianity as the true philosophy, the influence of Plato, the Sophists, and other philosophical traditions in the Homilies.

2. rhetorical techniques used in the numerous disputations within the novel and in the characterisation of the main protagonists, and

3. novelistic topoi as structural elements: the function of novelistic motives in the Homilies …

 

Registration

You can find the full programme here.

To register, please email Benjamin De Vos at Bmardvos.devos@ugent.be.

 

Organizers

Benjamin De Vos, Danny Praet and Koen De Temmerman

The second seminar in our series is by Silvia Montiglio (Johns Hopkins): ‘The popularity of Heliodorus among Byzantine critics and readers’.

Abstract: This talk focuses on the reception of Heliodorus by Byzantine scholars and readers. I emphasize (1) that every witness, regardless of provenance and level of sophistication, suggests that the Aethiopica was not only the most beloved novel in the period but was known far beyond scholarly circles; (2) that many aspects of the Byzantine exegesis of the novel are legitimately and deeply grounded in the text itself.

Please email evelien.bracke@ugent.be for the zoom link.

The third seminar in our online series is by Dr Ellen Söderblom Saarela (UGent) on ‘She must write her self, she did   write her self: Hysmine’s voice from within the wrong’.

Abstract:

We are at threshold towards the safe, happy, familiar ending of the tale. The lovers have been out on their adventures, fought against their obstacles, and here they are: safe and sound back home, to everyone’s delight. Hysminias, the narrator of Eumathios Makrembolites’ twelfth-century Byzantine novel, has recounted the events of his and his beloved Hysmine’s journeys towards their festive reunion. And now they want to hear Hysmine talk about her experiences of it, but she rejects their request. Why doesn’t Hysmine want to speak, why doesn’t she want to tell the others’ her story?

My talk circles around novel and romance heroines’ relation to storytelling, or the literary tradition. Other than Hysmine and Hysminias, mentioned above, I will discuss Chrétien de Troyes’ Old French romance Cligès, along with other relevant (clear or potential) intertextual works. The aim of my talk is to discern the presence of a perspective of a female reader of the literary tradition in the narratives. By discussing potential parallels between Old French and Byzantine literature, I aim to demonstrate the possibility to interpret articulations of female voices, or representations of female experiences, as forming part of the romance and novel genre that is under development during the twelfth century.

Hysmine then gives in, and tells the others of her past experiences. In my talk I will present an interpretation of her voice, as well as others, and its place in a world where “modesty inhibits a maidenly tongue”, to use her own words.

Please email evelien.bracke@ugent.be for the zoom link.

The fourth lecture in our online seminar series will be given by Paolo Brusa (Freie Universität Berlin) on ‘From wandering to destitution: a shift in Heliodoran peregrinatio in 17th-century Spain’

Abstract:

“Then nobody shall hold my peregrino for a product of fancy… because a stranger’s vicissitudes are not only verisimilar, but also forcibly true”.

My talk explores how Lope de Vega’s El peregrino en su patria (1604), from which the above quote stems, initiates and condenses a peculiar phenomenon in the Spanish early modern appropriations of the Hellenistic novel: the association of the protagonists’ peregrinations with a sense of precariousness and loss. As it began circulating in the world of printed vernacular literature in 1547, the Aethiopica must appear to its early modern Western readers as a foreign tale, both in a temporal and in a spatial sense: an ancient text whose story takes place in a geographically exotic landscape. Spanish translations duly bridged that gap in familiarity with footnotes and indices, which also highlighted the value of the reading as a source of (sometimes curious) knowledge. In the first Spanish novel based on Heliodorus, however, Lope de Vega takes a different route: contravening the recommendation of Neo-Aristotelian poetics, he sets the narration on the contemporary Iberian Peninsula. He thus stages a “stranger in his own homeland”, shifting the peregrination from the physical wandering on foreign soil to a more radical destitution. In my talk, I will analyse Lope’s defiant gesture and its connections to contemporary literary theory as well as novel writing and editing practices.

 

Please email evelien.bracke@ugent.be for the link.

The first lecture in our online seminar series will be given by Dr Benedek Kruchio (Universität Regensburg) on ‘Heliodorus’s Aethiopica and early Christian hermeneutics: a “historically informed” approach’.

 

Abstract:

The intellectual landscape of late antiquity was characterised by overlapping yet competing reading communities – philosophers, pepaideumenoi, and Christians – all of whom laid claim to the classical literary heritage in order to substantiate their own teachings. Focusing on Heliodorus’s Aethiopica (approx. 4th cent. C.E.), this paper asks the neglected question of how this ‘predatory’ environment informs our understanding of the contemporary literary production and its early reception. Is antiquity’s most virtuosic novel a ‘pagan’ or Christian work? Is it best understood as contributing to the same religious project as, for example, apocryphal acts and saints’ lives – or does Heliodorus fashion his novel in opposition to Christian narrative? I argue that such questions are based on an overly static understanding of texts, audiences, and their relationship: we need new, dynamic concepts to grasp the cultural framework and ideological force of late antique literature.

 

Please email evelien.bracke@ugent.be for the link.

The final lecture in our online seminar series will be given by Dr Nunzio Bianchi (Università degli studi di Bari Aldo Moro) on ‘From Babylon to Byzantium: Iamblichus’ novel and its reception’.

Abstract:

Iamblichos’ novel (generally dated to the second half of the second century AD), the Babylonian Tales (Βαβυλωνιακά, Babyloniaka), unfortunately has been lost and is known only through scattered fragments of various extent: an excerpt within the historical anthologies compiled for/by Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (905-959, emperor since 913), the so-called Excerpta Constantiniana; a some one hundred short quotations included in the massive tenth-century dictionary-encyclopaedia known as the Suda. And the earlier and the most important evidence: the epitome by Photios (9th century), patriarch of Constantinople, in chapter 94 of his Library (Bibliotheca), which informs us about the extraordinary and complex plot of this novel and its author.

I would like to provide an overview of the these testimonies with particular regard to Photios in an attempt to understand if it is possible to recognize in his summary specific words and expressions as actually belonging to Iamblichos’ novel. Unlike Photios, a somewhat different approach to the texts manifests in the anthologies of Constantine VII, which aimed to provide the reader not with brief summaries, but literal and more extended extracts. The latest evidence for Iamblichos’ novel comes from the Suda: it was compiled at roughly the same time, most likely in the same imperial and cultural milieu of the Excerpta Constantiniana, and probably made with the same textual materials, but with different purposes.

This overview on survival and loss of the Babylonian Tales in the Byzantine period starts with the oldest and problematic reference to Iamblichos: the mention of his name –which is literally possible, but not textually certain– in the late fourth-century medical treatise by Theodorus Priscianus.

 

Please contact Evelien Bracke for the link.