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Sophistic Views of the Epic Past from the Classical to the Imperial Age - 03-04-05/09/2018, Winchest


The aim of this conference is to investigate the ways in which the Sophists engaged with their poetic past, thus suggesting new perspectives and directions for the study of periods of major cultural and social transformation in antiquity. The conference aims to start by examining how the first Sophists, in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, appropriated and transformed the poetic past, in order to present themselves as the heirs of traditional culture - only to attempt to replace it with their new, revolutionary models. In addition to this, the conference seeks to explore how, in the Imperial age, writers belonging to the so-called Second Sophistic continued and innovated on this trend in new cultural and political circumstances. In so doing, the conference will identify similarities and differences in the first and second Sophistic’s approaches to the poetic past, and shed further light on aspects of continuity and innovation between them. We invite submission of abstracts from scholars of philosophy, rhetoric, reception of epic, and textual criticism, and encourage an interdisciplinary approach to the topic that covers various aspects of the Sophists’ interaction with the poetic tradition. Authors to be explored include Protagoras, Gorgias, Alcidamas, Prodicus, Antisthenes, Critias, Hippias, Lucian, Dio Chrysostom, and Philostratus.

FECHA /DATE/ DATA: 03-04-05/09/2018

ORGANIZADOR/ORGANIZER/ORGANIZZATORE: Paola Bassino; Nicolò Benzi

INFO: pala.bassino@winchester.ac.uk - n.benzi@ucl.ac.uk

INSCRIPCIÓN/REGISTRATION/REGISTRAZIONE: Aquí/here/qui Deadline: 27/08/2018

-Select option C (Delegates): £84

PROGRAMA/PROGRAM/PROGRAMMA:

3RD SEPTEMBER


13.30-14.20: Registration


14.20-14.30: Greetings and opening of the conference


14.30-15.30: Paola Bassino and Nicolò Benzi

Introduction; Palamedes, the Sophistic hero


15.30-16.00: Coffee Break


16.00-17.00: Roberta Ioli (University of Rome Tor Vergata)

Helen bewitching between Homer and Gorgias


19.00: Conference Dinner



4TH SEPTEMBER - MORNING


9.30-10.30: Andrew Ford (Princeton University)

Homer and the History of Literature in the Age of the Sophists


10.30-11.30: Kathryn Morgan (University of California, Los Angeles)

Mythological Role-Playing among the Sophists


11.30-12.00: Coffee Break


12.00-13.00: David F. Driscoll (University of California, Davis)

Sophistic taste: Intellectuals, poetry, and cultural capital

in Quaestiones Convivales 7.5


13.00-14-30: Lunch


4TH SEPTEMBER – AFTERNOON


14.30-15.30: Nicholas Wilshere (University of Nottingham)

I’m not vexed by these jibes: Re-reading epic with Lucian’s Judgement

of the Goddesses


15.30-16.30: Sara Tirrito (University of Nantes – University of Turin)

Helen was never abducted, Paris abducted her because he was

bored: two rewritings of Homer in Dio Chrysostom (orr. 11-20)


16.30-17.00: Coffee Break


17.00-18.00: Isidor Brodersen (Universität Duisburg-Essen)

Homer the liar: Subverting the epic past in Dio Chrysostom’s or. 11


5TH SEPTEMBER


9.30-10.30: Sophie Schoess (University of Oxford)

Viewing epic narrative in Philostratus’ Imagines


10.30-11.00: Coffee Break


11.00-12.00: Valentin Decloquement (Université de Lille)

A rhetorical Trojan War: Philostratos’ Heroikos, the power of language

and the construction of the truth


12.00-12.45: Conclusions

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