Archives: Events

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.

UNIVERSITY OF CRETE, DEPARTMENT OF PHILOLOGY
9th Rethymnon International Conference on the Ancient Novel: Body and Text in the Ancient Novel
9-11 OCTOBER 2019, XENIA

17:30: Olivier Demerre on “Catching bodies, catching texts: Longus and Ovid on hunting”

Website: http://www.philology.uoc.gr/conferences/RICAN

Together with colleagues from the Latin Section, Olivier Demerre organises a regular reading group on Gellius. The first session takes place on 29th October in the Camelot room (130.012 Blandijn).

Together with colleagues from the Latin Section, Olivier Demerre organises a regular reading group on Gellius. The second session takes place on 29th November.

Together with colleagues from the Latin Section, Olivier Demerre organises a regular reading group on Gellius. The third session takes place on the 3rd December.

Contact: olivier.demerre@ugent.be