Homer in the Renaissance
The Society for Early Modern Classical Reception (SEMCR) invites proposals for papers to be delivered at the 2020 meeting of the Society for Classical Studies in Washington, DC. For its fifth annual panel, SEMCR invites abstracts on the reception of Homer in all its manifestations in the early modern world.
The last fifteen years have seen an explosion in studies of the scholarly and creative reception of Homer in the Renaissance. Work by scholars including Marc Bizer, Tania Demetriou, Philip Ford, Filippomaria Pontani, and Jessica Wolfe--to name but a few--has illuminated the manuscript and print transmission of the Homeric texts and revealed the enormous range of contexts in which Homer was put to use and the immense variety of artistic, cultural, political, philosophical, and theological issues the Homeric poems were used to explore. Today it is possible to investigate questions in Homeric reception that would have been difficult to ask, let alone answer, fifteen years ago.
Proposals may address (but are not limited to) the transmission, translation, or book history of the Homeric texts; the commentary tradition; artistic, literary, or musical responses to Homer; political, philosophical, or scientific uses of Homer. We welcome the consideration of topics including the perspectives Homeric reception provides on Renaissance philology, knowledge of Greek or of oral composition, or the reconfiguration of literary or cultural histories; the discovery of Homer as a source of innovation or inspiration in a wide range of genres and media, or as an alternative to the authority of Latin poets or Roman culture; the geographical, political, or religious factors that influenced Homeric reception in different areas or communities, and the myriad uses to which the Homeric poems were put to explore those factors; the ways in which digital technologies might influence our understanding of Homer’s Renaissance reception.
We are committed to creating a congenial and collaborative forum for the infusion of new ideas into classics, and hence welcome abstracts that are exploratory in nature as well as abstracts of latter-stage research. Above all, we aim to show how the field of early modern classical reception can bear on a wide range of literary and cultural study, and to dispel the notion of an intimidating barrier to entry.
Abstracts of no more than 400 words, suitable for a 15-20 minute presentation, should be sent as an email attachment to ariane.schwartz@gmail.com. All persons who submit abstracts must be SCS members in good standing. The abstracts will be judged anonymously: please do not identify yourself in any way on the abstract page. Proposals must be received by Friday, March 8, 2019.