Os enviamos el perfil de este congreso que se celebrará en Chipre durante el otoño. Cada vez es más caro y complicado llegar hasta la isla, pero los temas a tratar tienen gran interés.
Tales
of miracle and wonder decorate both ancient and Byzantine literature
and seem to have had a great impact upon ancient and Byzantine thought. A
strong interest in the wondrous is already apparent in the works of
Homer and Hesiod. However, a more organized recording of marvels is
detected much later, in Herodotus’s time, when marvelous stories and
travel accounts of exotic places and peoples are increasingly produced.
From the era of Alexander and onwards such stories are recruited by
historians and rhetors in an attempt to apotheose the ideal ruler.
Between
the third century BC and the third century AD, the genre of
paradoxography, collections of stories relating strange events and
phenomena, achieves great popularity, and influences another new genre,
the Hellenistic novel. At about the same time, a number of stories
circulate that relate the miraculous healings of suffering people who
practice incubation in Asclepian temples. Later the practice of
incubation is taken over by Christian pilgrims who are cured by saints.
Miraculous healings and other types of miracles that are associated with
a particular Christian shrine become the material of a new genre, the
miracle collection which is cultivated throughout the Byzantine era.
Miracle stories are included in all Byzantine hagiographical genres,
since they constitute the strongest sign of holiness. Miracles and
wonders are also found in profane Byzantine genres, such as chronicles
and romances.
Despite
the fact that marvel literature enjoyed such a high popularity in
antiquity and Byzantium, it has been mostly dismissed by modern scholars
as debased, boring and even unintelligible, an attitude that has
condemned this literature to obscurity.
The
conference’s main aims are to bring to light miracle and wonder
literature and to open up new avenues of approach. Topics of exploration
may include:
• Literary Theoretical Approaches
• Cultural Studies
• Psychological Approaches
• Comparative Literary Studies
• Linguistics
Specialists are invited to submit a thirty-minute paper in English on a relevant topic.
Due
to budgetary constraints, the organizers cannot cover the speakers’
travel and hotel costs. There is no registration fee for participation
or attendance.
Prospective speakers are asked to submit by 30 April 2014 a title and a 400-word abstract to Stavroula Constantinou (konstans@ucy.ac.cy) and Maria Gerolemou (mariagerolemou@live.de).
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