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INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
21-22 September 2017
University College London
Modern literary critics have often fallen victim to scathing remarks by practicing authors. Inherent in this tendency is the assumption that the work of critics is an incidental epiphenomenon to the more essential activity of creative literary art. Critical theories of literature are thought to follow from the practice of authors who pay little heed to the former in blazing their particular trails. It is perhaps as a consequence of such attitudes that the possibility of a mutually influential interaction between poetry and poetics in antiquity has rarely received much scholarly attention. Much excellent research in recent decades has enhanced our understanding of the poetical theories of ancient philosophers, rhetoricians, scholars and grammarians. To name two examples, new and improved editions of the Derveni papyrus and of the Herculaneum papyri of Philodemus have illuminated Classical and Hellenistic methods of interpreting literature - yet the implications of these theories for our understanding of the practice of ancient poets have seldom been the main focus of investigation. Our aim is to address this neglect with a conference to be held at University College London, which will be devoted to the relationship between the theory and practice of ancient Greek poetry.
Programme
Thursday 21 September
10.00-10.30
Coffee and Registration
10.30-11.00
Welcome and Introduction
11.00-11.50
Andrew Ford (Princeton): 'Between Poets and Philosophers: Vernacular Criticism in Classical Greece'
11.50-12.40
Tom Mackenzie (UCL): 'Eleatic Poetics'
- Lunch
14.00-14.50
Theodora Hadjimichael (Warwick): 'Lyric Disturbed'
14.50-15.40
Tom Phillips (Oxford): 'Apollonius' Argonautica and the Travels of Lyric'
- Coffee, Tea
16.00-16.50
René Nünlist (Cologne): 'Interaction between Hellenistic Theory and Practice: some Cautionary Remarks'
16.50-17.40
Elizabeth Asmis (Chicago): 'Philodemus Revisited'
Friday 22 September
09.30-10.20
Casper de Jonge (Leiden): 'Antipater of Thessalonica: Poetry and Literary Criticism in the Augustan Age'
10.20-11.10
Malcolm Heath (Leeds): 'The Functions of Poetry in On Sublimity'
- Coffee, tea
11.40-12.30
Luuk Huitink (Heidelberg): '"Pictorialism" in Literary Theory and Practice'
12.30-13.20
Emily Kneebone (Cambridge): 'Literary Criticism and Imperial Greek Epic'
- Lunch
14.30-15.10
Baukje van den Berg (University of Silesia in Katowice): 'Eustathius on Homeric Poetics and Tzetzes' Poetry on Homer: Poetry and Education in Twelfth-Century Byzantium'
15.10-16.00
Tim Whitmarsh (Cambridge): 'Nonnian Polymers'
16.00-16.30
Plenary Discussion
- Registration for Thursday 21st September
- Registration for Friday 22nd September
Those wishing to attend the conference dinner on the Thursday evening at a cost of £40 should contact Tom Mackenzie, stating any dietary requirements.
- Venue: to be confirmed
For further information please contact Tom Mackenzie or Casper de Jonge
The Conference has been made possible thanks to the generous support of the A.G. Leventis foundation, and the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research (NWO).
