Creating Audiences in Didactic Poetry
An organizer-refereed panel for the 2018 meeting of the Society of Classical Studies in Boston, Massachusetts
T. H. M. Gellar-Goad, Wake Forest University, and Lisa Whitlatch, St. Olaf College, co-organizers
There is little consensus on the defining features of didactic poetry, and some even question if it is a genre. Whether didactic is a true genre or a mode found in a variety of poems, it is generally agreed upon that didactic poetry claims to teach. How the poems define their audiences, and how the addressee and internal audiences relate to the external readers, are important questions for interpreting the author’s understanding of the didactic process. Furthermore, once the author has gotten the reader’s attention, how does the author gain the reader’s assent? In this panel, we seek papers that bring a new, clear look at the creation of audiences in Greek and Roman didacticism.
Work on the mega nēpios addressee of didactic, on the collusive audience of satire, and on the comparative difficulty of reading didactic versus satire show that there is more exploration needed regarding the didactic mode in general across genres and the theoretical underpinnings of didactic poetry. Reader-response and audience-focused readings of Greek and Roman poetry, particularly Ovid, have similarly flourished in the past two decades, and the occasion now presents itself for reader-response analysis of ancient didactic poetry.
We invite papers that investigate any aspect of the relationships between text, speaker, and audience in Graeco-Roman didactic poetry. Papers might address some or all of the following questions: what are the formal ways in which authors establish audience? Does the poem speak to multiple audiences, and how are they distinguished? Are there multiple strategies for establishing authority with the reader across texts? What is the relationship between the addressee and the audience? How does the poet distinguish between the two? Is the addressee a positive or negative exemplum? Do the answers vary according to the author discussed, or are they consistent? Is the search for a formal, theoretical understanding of didactic poetry futile? How can the didactic mode be seen in other genres? What biases do scholars have in attempting to construct or deconstruct the notion of didactic genre?
Abstracts should be submitted as an attachment to info@classicalstudies.org with a subject line of “Creating Audiences in Didactic Poetry” by February 24, 2017. The text of the abstract should not mention the name of the author and should follow the SCS guidelines for abstracts. The organizers will review all submissions anonymously and inform submitters of their decision by the end of March 2017.