The Cultures of Georgia and Armenia
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Rare Book Dept., The Free Library of Philadelphia
Organizer Name
Bert Beynen
Organizer Affiliation
Temple Univ.
Presider Name
Sergio La Porta
Presider Affiliation
California State Univ.-Fresno
Paper Title 1
Material Evidence of the Eleventh-Century Armenian Migration to Southern Pontus
Presenter 1 Name
Polina Ivanova
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Harvard Univ.
Paper Title 2
Psalm 120:5 and Its Historical Significance for the Kartvelian Tribes
Presenter 2 Name
Constantine B. Lerner
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem
Paper Title 3
The Typology of Old Testament Georgian Manuscripts and Their Textual History
Presenter 3 Name
Alessandro Maria Bruni
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Ca’ Foscari Univ. Venezia
Paper Title 4
Re-Reading the Rose and Nightingale: Patterns in Medieval Anatolian Literary Production
Presenter 4 Name
Michael B. Pifer
Presenter 4 Affiliation
Univ. of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Start Date
11-5-2019 10:00 AM
Session Location
Schneider 1245
Description
Pifer sheds new light on Kostandin Erznkatsi's The Rose and the Nightingale: they are meant to be read as signifiers for Christ and Gabriel's horn, respectively. Though scholars have generally focused on the "conversion" of the rose and nightingale (bulbul) from Islamicate poetry to a Christian milieu, this paper places Kostandin's exegesis in a comparative context. Others, including Jalal al-Din Rumi, likewise sought to teach audiences to discard outer narrative forms and seek the inner "secrets" within a text. Pifer argues that a common mode of engaging with audiences, and adapting the literatures of "others," thus undergirds the literary activity of both poets. Ivanova discusses the migration of Vaspurakan (Van) Armenians to North Cappadocia and Southern Pontus on the basis of a lead seal, a coin and a khachkar (cross-stone) that elucidate connections between this part of Asia Minor and Vaspurakan, and illustrate the ways Armenians did fit into the Byzantine political and sacred order. Lerner discusses two unclear lexical items in Psalm 120, Meshech and Kedar, to decide whether they refer to actual tribes or must be understood as idiomatic expressions describing the vague conditions of poetic usage. Bruni discusses Old Georgian Bible translations and provides a typology of manuscripts that contain Old Testament translations. The discussion will focus on the several stages in the development of this corpus and its various textual layers.
Bert Beynen
The Cultures of Georgia and Armenia
Schneider 1245
Pifer sheds new light on Kostandin Erznkatsi's The Rose and the Nightingale: they are meant to be read as signifiers for Christ and Gabriel's horn, respectively. Though scholars have generally focused on the "conversion" of the rose and nightingale (bulbul) from Islamicate poetry to a Christian milieu, this paper places Kostandin's exegesis in a comparative context. Others, including Jalal al-Din Rumi, likewise sought to teach audiences to discard outer narrative forms and seek the inner "secrets" within a text. Pifer argues that a common mode of engaging with audiences, and adapting the literatures of "others," thus undergirds the literary activity of both poets. Ivanova discusses the migration of Vaspurakan (Van) Armenians to North Cappadocia and Southern Pontus on the basis of a lead seal, a coin and a khachkar (cross-stone) that elucidate connections between this part of Asia Minor and Vaspurakan, and illustrate the ways Armenians did fit into the Byzantine political and sacred order. Lerner discusses two unclear lexical items in Psalm 120, Meshech and Kedar, to decide whether they refer to actual tribes or must be understood as idiomatic expressions describing the vague conditions of poetic usage. Bruni discusses Old Georgian Bible translations and provides a typology of manuscripts that contain Old Testament translations. The discussion will focus on the several stages in the development of this corpus and its various textual layers.
Bert Beynen