‘Mettre la ville en poésie dans l’Antiquité tardive’ is the title of an online workshop on 18 June 2025, organised by Florence Garambois-Vasquez (University of Saint-Etienne) and Gaëlle Herbert de la Portbarré-Viard (University of Aix-Marseille). Abstracts are awaited by 30 April at the latest.
For information, see here.
Call for Papers. Deadline 30 April 2024
The Jeweled Materiality of Late Antique/Early Medieval Objects and Texts From Cloisonné to Stained Glass to Experimental Poetry (4th–9th Centuries)
International conference, November 11–12, 2024
Center for Early Medieval Studies, Masaryk University, Brno
Organizers: Alberto Virdis, Marie Okáčová
The interface among the material, visual, and literary cultures of the long late antiquity and beyond has become a topic of scholarly interest ever since the publication of the seminal 1989 book The Jeweled Style by Michael Roberts. The visual–verbal dialectics of this period of geopolitical and cultural transformation, as manifested in various instances of spoliation, patterns of fragmentation, and a preoccupation with (exquisite) detail in different cultural media, were subsequently studied especially by Jaś Elsner and Jesús Hernández Lobato. The topical relevance of Roberts’ original concept more than 30 years after its invention is clear from, among other scholarly endeavors, the recent edited volume A Late Antique Poetics? The Jeweled Style Revisited (2023), which offers numerous insightful contributions on the topic across different genres, regions, and temporal contexts.
Read on via ResearchGate
Tomasz Babnis writes on Roman embassies to Persia, comparing passages in Claudian and Sidonius: ‘Idem aliter, czyli o dwóch opisach dyplomatycznej podróży do Persji w poezji późnego antyku (Claud. Cons. Stil. I 51–68; Sid. Carm. II 75–88)’ [… two descriptions of a diplomatic trip to Persia in the poetry of Late Antiquity], Collectanea Philologica 24 (2021) 111-25.
Read in Academia
Annick Stoehr-Monjou, ‘How to conclude? A poetics of contrast and paradox in Book 9 and especially in Epist. 9,13-16 by Sidonius Apollinaris’, is a paper given at the International conference and workshop ‘The Stumbling Texts (and Stumbling Readers) of Late Latin Poetry (Lector, quas patieris hic salebras!)’, organised by Markus Kersten, Ann-Kathrin Stähle and Christian Guerra, September 2021, Basel.
Stoehr-Monjou argues that the last four letters of book 9 can be read together as the peroration of his epistolary work, a paradoxical peroration since he writes about poetry.
In HAL Archives (first version).
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
Luciana Furbetta (Università di Trieste), ‘Nostrae vagae nugae’: Sidonio Apollinare e la poesia
In November, the University of Molise will organize its eighth international conference of the Centro Internazionale di Studi sulla Poesia greca a latina in età tardoantica e medievale.
Filomena Giannotti will speak on ‘Levigata pagina: l’epitaffio di Sidonio per il nonno Apollinare (ep. III 12)’.
Leaflet programme
The harmony of parts skillfully put together, concinnitas in Ausonius and Sidonius Apollinaris, is the subject of Marco Onorato’s latest article in Étienne Wolff (ed.), La réception d’Ausone dans les littératures européennes.
See Bibliography 2019.
Roger Green speaks on ‘Humour in the Poems of Sidonius Apollinaris’ for CLANS (Cambridge Late Antiquity Network Seminar Series)
Lucie Desbrosses has got her doctorate at the University of Besançon (supervisor Stéphane Ratti). The title of her thesis is: ‘Sidoine Apollinaire et la Gaule chrétienne au Ve siècle’.
Abstract: ‘This dissertation investigates how Sidonius Apollinaris’ poetry and letters shed light on the Christian identity of Gaul in Late Antiquity, and how the author takes part in defining it. It focuses on Christian reactions to traditional culture and the “pagan” background in particular, paying special attention to claims of renunciation and to actual comprises with past patterns. It first of all paints a picture of fifth-century Christianity in Gaul, studying how, and how deeply, the religio nova had penetrated the Gallic provinces, pointing out the remains of heterodox and “pagan” beliefs. It also examines the cultural (dis)continuity in the individual transition from lay status to conversio and clerical status, for which Sidonius, belonging to the lay social élite, and then to the clerical sphere, is a key figure. It pays special attention to writing poetry to enhance Christian identity, but also to express one’s nostalgic attachment to the ancient world, its literature, its culture, and its past pleasures.’
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