CfP: MAPPOLA Workshop ‘But is it art? Exploring the aesthetic limits of Roman poetry’

“Though traditional metrics describes everything, it explains nothing, merely bogging students down in detail and leading them to wonder how Terence ever wrote a line without a German philologist to tell him how.”

Sander M. Goldberg, BMCR 1999.06.23

Research context

Unlike in many other philologies, definitions of poetry in the context of our field generally still very much rely on a narrow set of rules related to formal design: the quintessential test for Greek and Latin scholars, when interested in the poetic nature of any given text, appears to be summed up in the very simple question: “but does it scan,” quickly followed by “but does it adhere to all the metrical ‘laws’ that have been identified by scholars of ancient meter?” Sander M. Goldberg’s delightful quote, above, captures this matter with precision, but also leads on to an even more important question: how can we move forward to an appreciation of ancient (Roman) poetry in a way that actually explains something, namely what the authors and consumers of Roman verse thought was of key importance, aesthetically, when they produced or encountered poetry in its various settings?

It is unsurprising that ‘the classics’, i. e. the poems and compositions of the famous Roman poets, whose works underwent a manuscript tradition of in some cases up to 2,200 years, look exceptionally smooth and well-composed: these authors were creative geniuses and perfectionists, no doubt, but many generations of learned interference, working forward from the notion that geniuses never made any ‘mistake’ in the first place, has not helped our ability to achieve a realistic interpretation. Arguably, this millennia-long honing process has worked in favour of the literary tradition (or our perception of it). At the same time it has very much worked to the disadvantage of those compositions that did not follow the same route, most notably, but not solely, to the disadvantage of that very considerable body of evidence for ancient poetic production that lies in the Roman verse inscriptions, Latin and Greek. To the present day, these compositions are seen as inferior, in some cases vilified as the inane outputs of miserable poetasters.

The MAPPOLA project investigates the poetic landscapes of the Roman Empire, both in its static, local dimensions and with a view to its dynamics, e. g. caused by forms of mobility and dislocation of individuals and entire groups of people in the ancient world. In order to do our work, and to do it well, we need to make decisions about texts, on a daily basis, regarding the deceptively simple question “but is it a poem” – or, perhaps better still, “but is it art”? Many concepts have been tried out: from notions of ‘faulty poems’ to ‘rhythmical prose’, from ‘commaticum’ to ‘affective prose’.

Considering the implications and subsequent ramifications of such classifications It is high time to challenge traditional narratives and approaches. Our guiding questions in this will be:

• How can we know what the authors wanted to write, prose or verse?
• Can there be a strict division between rhetorically embellished prose and poetry? 
• Is flawless (prescriptive) metrical design a good yardstick in the assessment of what constitutes a poem? 
• How does ancient creative practice relate to contemporary (ancient) grammatical scholarship?
• How plausible is the assumption that only the established literary canon of Grecian meters (plus the notoriously opaque Saturnian) had a place in folk poetry?
• Which challenges does the variety of artistic design (and the difficulty to capture it in precise terms) pose in the creation of digital resources, and how can they be addressed and overcome?

In this context, we organise a workshop, inviting scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds and traditions to join us in our desire to gain a significantly more complex and robust understanding of the aesthetic limits of Roman poetry. This workshop will include discussions of meter(s) just as much as consideration of linguistic design, formal layout, and author intentions and reader responses.

Workshop format

As much as we would prefer to hold a workshop in person, we feel that the only way to plan robustly and with confidence at this point in time, under COVID conditions, is to organise an online workshop. The workshop will be hosted by the MAPPOLA team in the Department of Ancient History and Classical Studies, Papyrology and Epigraphy at the University of Vienna.

The workshop will take place on two consecutive afternoons (Central European (Summer) Time) on 30 September and 1 October, 2021. It will provide what we hope will be a lively mixture of presentations, e-posters, and a lot of lively discussion and exchange of ideas.

Confirmed speakers include (in alphabetical order) Hugues Berthelot, Alberto Bolaños Herrera, Rocío Carande Herrero, Concepción Fernández Martínez, Jan Kwapisz, Simon Oswald, and Günther E. Thüry.

Call for Papers and Posters

At this point, we invite interested researchers, from all backgrounds and at all levels of seniority, with or without institutional affiliation, to submit proposals for papers or posters.

Proposals for contributions should reach us no later than May 31st, 2021, and we will confirm acceptance of proposals for the workshop within two weeks from that date.

Proposals, to be sent to mappola.erc(at)gmail.com, should include (i) name and contact details of the proposing party, (ii) title of the proposed contribution (as well as a statement on whether this is intended as a paper, a poster, or either), and (iii) an abstract of no more than 300 words.

Submissions will be accepted in all official languages of the AIEGL (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish), and they will be reviewed by the MAPPOLA team.

Call for Papers and Posters

Presentations & posters: In the interest of a smooth running of our workshop, as well as with a view to maximising discussion and interaction, we will ask all contributors to make their presentations available to workshop participants at least two weeks ahead of the event: please be mindful of this requirement already at the time of submitting your proposal. This could be in the format of a lecture script, an audio or video file, or any other form that you deem appropriate for this. We will provide an IT infrastructure to do so safely (password protected) and in keeping with relevant copyright requirements.

Presentations: Submissions may take any form (written, audio, video), and should be the equivalent of a conference length paper (think: 20-30 minutes); for the purpose of the actual event, we propose that you choose an aspect or case study related to your paper’s overall argument to fill an absolute maximum of 5 minutes’ presentation, giving all of us maximum space and scope for lively debate.

The MAPPOLA project receives funding by the European Research Council and promotes the accessibility of its research. (Virtual) attendance will be free of charge.