#CfP Technepopoiia: Between Greek Technical Poetry and Treatises in Verse

Technepopoiia: between Greek technical poetry and treatises in verse
(12 July 2018, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands)

Although dramatic, lyric, and narrative epic poetry have always been prominent within the main view of what Greek poetry is about, many works do not fit easily within these categories. The poetry of Aratus, the pharmacological poems of Nicander, the elegy of Andromachus, the Oppians’ poems on hunting, fishing and animal wildlife, the geographical poetry of Dionysius of Alexandria: these texts operate on the cusp of art and technicalities, of literature and the preservation and presentation of knowledge. Whereas traditionally they have been labelled didactic poetry, following in the tradition of Hesiod, this didactic frame is only part of what characterises these texts. They challenge traditional ideas about what good poetry should look like, and invite us to think about the distinction between poets venturing into technical subject and specialists expressing themselves in verse. Is poetry merely a convenient vehicle for the preservation of knowledge, or does art serve a more aesthetic purpose?

This conference, to be held in Soeterbeeck on 12 July 2018 (Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands) aims to approach such technical poetry from different viewpoints: as art and as expression of knowledge.

We are particularly interested in scholars working on medical verse (Nicander, Numenius, Andromachus, Marcellus, Damocrates, Carmen de viribus), geographical poetry (Dionysius Periegetes, ps.-Scymnus), astronomical epic (Aratus, ps.-Manetho), poetry on fishing and hunting (the Oppians), the Lithica, and contiguous poems (didactic or technical epigrams, poetry on math etc.).

Questions that may be relevant:

· is the label ‘didactic poetry’ suitable for all these diverging poems?

· was presentation in verse aimed at popularizing (contemporary) science?

· what is the relation between learning, leisure and pleasure as expressed or suggested by these poems?

· what sort of contexts can we imagine for the presentation of such technical poetry?

· what is the relation between e.g. medical poetry and medical prose?

· what is the relation between formal aspects (framing, metre, generic conventions) and contents?

· to what extent can one distinguish between scholars writing poetry and poets presenting technical or scholarly knowledge?

Those interested in presenting a paper of ca. 30 minutes are invited to submit a short abstract (with title) of 250 words before 10 May 2018.

This conference is is made possible by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. Accommodation is covered; full or partial funding of travel costs is negotiable depending on availability of resources. For further information please contact Floris Overduin (f.overduin@let.ru.nl).

Coloquio internacional 'Tzetzes' (Venecia, 6-8 septiembre 2018)

Os dejamos a continuación el programa de este encuentro que tendrá lugar en septiembre. Como veis, lo han publicado con la antelación suficiente para hacer planes, así que aquellos que podáis estar interesados poneos una alerta en el calendario o en la agenda para que no se os pase.

International Colloquium 'Tzetzes'

Venice, 6th-8th September 2018 

Thursday 6th September

9:30 Opening of the colloquium: Giovannella Cresci, Head of the Department of Humanities

9:40 Alessandra Bucossi – Tzetzes and the twelfth century

10:20 Frederick Lauritzen – Allegory in eleventh- and twelfth-century Constantinople (Iliad 4.1)

11:20 Vlada Stankovic – John Tzetzes as an epistolographer and a witness of the creation of Manuel Komnenos’ autocracy

12:00 Giulia Gerbi – Epistulae ad exercitationem accommodatae: notes on some fictitious epistles by John Tzetzes

14:20 Aglae Pizzone – Why a self-commentary? Tzetzes’ Historiai and the emergence of a new genre in twelfth-century Byzantium

15:00 Julián Bértola – Tzetzes’ verse scholia: a particular case of book epigrams

16:00 Tommaso Braccini – A neglected manuscript of Tzetzes’ Allegories from the Verse-chronicle: first remarks

16:40 Jacopo Cavarzeran – “Euripides talks nonsense” (schol. Eur. Hipp. 1013b)

17:20 Thomas Coward – Discerning Tzetzes: Towards a new edition of Tzetzes’ commentary on Lycophron

Friday 7th September

9:00 Valeria Lovato – John Tzetzes’ reception of Orpheus, teacher of truth

9:40 Caterina Franchi – Una, nessuna, centomila: Penthesilea between Tzetzes and Eustathius

10:20 Corinne Jouanno – Tzetzes’ Alexander: between learned and popular culture 

11:20 Ettore Cingano – Facing the early and classical authors: Tzetzes’ reliability as a source of rare information

12:00 Anna Novokhatko – παρὰ τῶν τεσσάρων τούτων σοφῶν: John Tzetzes as a critic

14:20 Johanna Michels – Tzetzes mythographus in Vaticanus Gr. 950

15:00 Minerva Alganza Roldán – Le Chiliadi di Tzetze e la tradizione mitografica: il caso di Palefato

16:00 Philip Rance – Tzetzes and the mechanographoi

16:40 Jesús Muñoz Morcillo – John Tzetzes on ekphrasis

17:20 Ugo Mondini – John of all trades: Carmina Iliaca and Tzetzes’ didactic programme

Saturday 8th September

9:00 Marc Lauxtermann – Buffaloes and bastards: Tzetzes on metre

9:40 Baukje van den Berg – Verses for his deceased brother: John Tzetzes’ didactic poetry and his treatise on metres

10:20 Enrico Magnelli – Tzetzes’ hexameter: not so unruly?

11:20 Yulia Mantova – Tzetzes’ legacy as a source on the socio-cultural use of invective in Byzantium

12:00 Tomasz Labuk – Tzetzes on the foul literary cuisine: contemporary Byzantine discourses and ancient literary engagements

The colloquium will take place in Ca’ Foscari, the University’s historical core, in the scenic Aula Baratto, overlooking the Grand Canal. The address is Dorsoduro 3246, 30123 Venice; a map can be found <here>.

There is no registration fee, but space is limited, so participants are kindly requested to register their interest by emailing the organiser at enricoemanuele.prodi@unive.it by 31st July 2018.

The colloquium is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA-IF-EF-2015) grant agreement no. 708556 ASAGIP.

'New Light on Old Manuscripts: Recent Advances in Palimpsest Studies' (Viena, 24-27 abril 2018)

Dear colleagues,

We would like to draw your attention to a large international conference that will be hosted at the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, funded by Prof. Claudia Rapp’s FWF Wittgenstein-Award, from 24 to 27 April 2018.

'New Light on Old Manuscripts: Recent Advances in Palimpsest Studies' brings together an international assembly of scholars who have been in the forefront of the study of erased and re-written parchment manuscripts in recent years, either in reading and analyzing palimpsests texts or in making them legible through advanced imaging and image processing methods.

The conference will also feature work that has been accomplished in the course of the Sinai Palimpsests Project that is now available online (sinaipalimpsests.org). The Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine is not only the oldest Christian monastery (including its library) in continuous operation, it also contains the world's largest collection of palimpsested manuscripts on parchment. In the course of the Sinai Palimpsests Project—undertaken at the invitation of the Monastery by an international team of camera specialists, image scientists, and textual scholars—more than half of this palimpsest collection was imaged using cutting-edge multispectral photography, rendered legible through innovative methods of computer-based analysis, and the erased texts identified by experts in all the languages of the Christian Orient.

The Opening Lecture by Father Justin Sinaites, the Librarian of Saint Catherine's Monastery, on the topic “The Sinai Palimpsests: Recovering Ancient Texts and the Early History of the Monastery” will take place on 24 April, 17:00 in the main building of the University of Vienna ("BIG Lecture Hall" Universitätsring 1, 1010 Vienna). The conference sessions will take place in the main building of the Austrian Academy of Sciences from 25th to 27th April (9:00-18:00/18:30 - at the “ÖAW Sitzungssaal”, Doktor-Ignaz-Seipel-Platz 2, 1010 Vienna, First Floor).

Both the conference and the lecture are open to the public. There are no fees for participation and registration is not necessary.

Please find attached the lecture announcement and the programme of the

conference on our website http://rapp.univie.ac.at/.

We hope that these events meet with your interest and would welcome further inquiries. Please direct these to Ms. Paraskevi Sykopetritou (paraskevi.sykopetritou@univie.ac.at).