Innovation in Identities, Innovation in Narratives: Literature in the Mediterranean Region in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Univ. of Florida; Centrum Ceraneum, Univ. Lodzki
Organizer Name
Florin Curta
Organizer Affiliation
Univ. of Florida
Presider Name
Andrei Gandila
Presider Affiliation
Univ. of Alabama-Huntsville
Paper Title 1
Identity in Statu Nascendi: The Case of the Early Constantinopolitan Authors
Presenter 1 Name
Andrzej Kompa
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Univ. of Lodz
Paper Title 2
Evolution of a Genre, Evolution of an Identity: Barbarians in Latin Panegyrics of Late Antiquity
Presenter 2 Name
Adrian Szopa
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Univ. Pedagogiczny im. Komisji Edukacji Narodowej w Krakowie
Paper Title 3
Innovation in Ninth-Century Byzantium: Was the Chronicle of Synkellos and Theophanes Meant to Incite a Revolt?
Presenter 3 Name
Jesse W. Torgerson
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Wesleyan Univ.
Start Date
14-5-2016 10:00 AM
Session Location
Schneider 1145
Description
Scholars have long emphasized cultural continuity from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages in the Mediterranean region. As a result, one has now abandoned negative visions of the literature of the era as corrupted, distorted, or inept emulations of classical genres, styles, and paradigms. However, the positive account of that literature has not been sufficiently researched. Accounts of the late Antique and early medieval literature as a new literary landscape now focus on “givens” – such as Greco-Roman paideia and Christian faith – augmented by the “new” – intellectual exchanges and interactions between unique regional cultures. In all of this, students of late antique and early medieval literature do not seem to be able yet to move from a model of borrowing to one of creation. Can innovation be advanced as a focal concept of a literary history of the period? The session adopts a comparative approach by working with difference and the new in narratives, and in authorial identities. The idea is to take seriously into consideration the individualism of the literati, as well as their background and respective contexts. Comparisons between the eastern and the western Mediterranean are not without promise, so long as one recognizes that constant migrations, contacts and intellectual exchanges existed beyond political or military barriers, and that the common root of those overlapping cultural spheres was still not far distant.
Innovation in Identities, Innovation in Narratives: Literature in the Mediterranean Region in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
Schneider 1145
Scholars have long emphasized cultural continuity from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages in the Mediterranean region. As a result, one has now abandoned negative visions of the literature of the era as corrupted, distorted, or inept emulations of classical genres, styles, and paradigms. However, the positive account of that literature has not been sufficiently researched. Accounts of the late Antique and early medieval literature as a new literary landscape now focus on “givens” – such as Greco-Roman paideia and Christian faith – augmented by the “new” – intellectual exchanges and interactions between unique regional cultures. In all of this, students of late antique and early medieval literature do not seem to be able yet to move from a model of borrowing to one of creation. Can innovation be advanced as a focal concept of a literary history of the period? The session adopts a comparative approach by working with difference and the new in narratives, and in authorial identities. The idea is to take seriously into consideration the individualism of the literati, as well as their background and respective contexts. Comparisons between the eastern and the western Mediterranean are not without promise, so long as one recognizes that constant migrations, contacts and intellectual exchanges existed beyond political or military barriers, and that the common root of those overlapping cultural spheres was still not far distant.