Category: Conference

Translation and Bilingualism

Alison John and Alan Ross will be organising a conference in Oxford on 8-9 July titled “Translation and the Limits of Greek-Latin Bilingualism in Late Antiquity”. Among other speakers, Filomena Giannotti will speak on “Challenging Decadence Through Translation. A Literary Example from Sidonius Apollinaris (Ep. 8.3) and his work on Philostratus’ Vita Apollonii”.

Programme and particulars here

Glitter in Poetry

Judith Hindermann and Raphael Schwitter will speak on late Latin poetry and Sidonius in particular at the upcoming conference “Light and Splendour: precious metal as a medium of ritual and social interaction in Late Antiquity”, in Basel (hybrid) on 20-22 January.

From the programme:
20 January
16:00–17:00 Light and splendour in literature

PD Dr. Raphael Schwitter, Bonn
Words of gold and silver: iconic and symbolic mimesis of precious metal in Late Antique poetry

Dr. Judith Hindermann, Basel
A new splendour: the recusatio of precious materials in Sidonius Apollinaris’ letters
and poems

17:00–17:30 Discussion

For in-person attendance email to annemarie.kaufmannATunibas.ch
Zoom: https://unibas.zoom.us/s/68889057751

Bari-Durham Writing Letters

On 25 and 26 November, an international colloquium will be held of early career researchers in ancient epistolography, organised by the Universities of Bari and Durham: ‘Writing Letters in the Ancient World: Fictional and Real Letters from the First Century BC to the Fifth Century AD’.

Keynote speakers: Roy Gibson and Ruth Morello.

Giulia Marolla is to speak on ‘Sidonius, Letters Book 5: Between Literary Fiction and Autobiography’.

Organising committee: Laura Losito, Giulia Marolla and Enrico Simonetti.

Download programme here. If you wish to attend, please contact Laura Losito (Durham).

Fascione’s Concatenantur Summarised

Organised by Sara Fascione, the international conference Concatenantur sibi epistulae nostrae took place online on 23-24 September. Its proceedings will be published in the near future.
Sara summarised the results as follows:

“Leitmotif of the conference has been the attempt to understand to what extent arrangement criteria are a relevant element to consider when reading a letter collection.

We saw that the concept of a letter collection itself is very fluid and that the types of arrangement criteria are numerous, and cannot always be classified. The fact that over half of the extant letter collections has no single and largely stable order in the manuscript tradition should always be considered when trying to find ordering patterns. Another element to take into account, as has emerged from the discussion, is the reader’s involvement in creating meaning when approaching a text. Any reading aiming at identifying an internal narrative, a logic in the progression of the letters, has a certain degree of subjectivity.

Nevertheless, the authors, or the editors, of the collections under consideration clearly evince the effort of creating consistency through different strategies. I think we have shown in the last two days that, even if the concepts of intentionality or authoriality still challenge scholars dealing with epistolography, arrangement in any form is used by authors or editors to make the collections into consistent wholes. Letters are really interlaced, as Ambrose’s statement on the ‘concatenatio’ lets infer; it is our task, as modern readers, to understand how.“

Stumbling Texts to Start

Lector, quas patieris hic salebras!
The Stumbling Texts (and Stumbling Readers) of Late Latin Poetry

Basel, 30th Sept. – 2nd Oct. 2021,
organised by Ann-Kathrin Stähle, Markus Kersten, Christian Guerra, Henriette Harich-Schwarzbauer

Further information can be found here: https://latinistik.philhist.unibas.ch/de/aktuelles/veranstaltungen/details/lector/

Those interested in participating (online) are asked to contact alex.giannotta@unibas.ch

PROGRAMME:

Christiane Reitz (Rostock/Berlin): Reading – what and why? Some reflections on progress, deterioration and evaluation of ancient literature

Claudia Schindler (Hamburg): Quoting quotations: Multi-layer intertextuality in late antique poetry

Aaron Pelttari (Edinburgh): Chapters, Headings, and Tables of Contents in Later Latin Literature

Luciana Furbetta (Trieste): Legere and/or tegere? Reflections on a ‘key question’ for the Late Antique Author and his Readers

Joshua Hartmann (Brunswick, ME): Memory and the Purpose of Poetry in Late Antique Paratexts

Andreas Abele (Tübingen): Elaboratam soloci filo accipe cantilenam. The ‘Preface’ of Symmachus’ Letter Collection

Annick Stoehr-Monjou (Clermont): How to conclude? A poetics of contrast and paradox in Sid. Epist. IX,13-16

Scott McGill (Houston, TX): Revising Rewriting: Eudocia, the Cento, and Distributed Authorship

Jesús Hernández Lobato (Salamanca): Adstipulatio veri: Language and Reality in Ennodius of Pavia

Etienne Wolff (Paris): Le discours d’Ausone sur son œuvre

Florence Garambois-Vasquez (St. Etienne): Les lettres préfacielles d’Ausone, paratexte paradigme ou paratexte parasite?

Brian P. Sowers (Brooklyn, NY): Everyone’s a Critic: Ausonius on His Coterie and Its Etiquette

Claire Pryor (Sydney): Intertextuality, metapoetics, and the development of an “ascetic sublime” in Paulinus of Nola’s Letters to Ausonius and Amandus

Christopher Poms (Graz): Quas rudi latinitate compositas elegis sum explicare conatus: The disparaging assessments, topical modesty, and ‘awkward’ intertextuality in Avianus

Adrien Bresson (Lyon): Claudian’s Carmina minora: a collection of short pieces by a stumbling poet?

Raphael Schwitter (Bonn): The politics of rusticitas in late antique hagiography

Enno Friedrich (Graz/Erfurt): Venantius Fortunatus’s vecors otium in his letter to Bishop Syagrius

Elena Castelnuovo (Milano): De modicis minimus: Venantius Fortunatus and the value of his Life of Saint Martin