Call for Papers: Intertextuality and Greek and Roman Cultural Memory
SCS Annual Meeting 2024 – January 4–7, Chicago, IL
Organizers: Hans Hansen, Zackary Rider and Tedd Wimperis
Since Pasquali’s (1951) foundational work on allusion, the link between memory and intertextuality has been taken as axiomatic; Conte (1986), in fact, equates “poetic memory” with intertextuality. But in a recent monograph on the Octavia and the Julio-Claudian dynasty and its literature, Ginsberg (2016) demonstrates that classical intertextuality is implicated in memory in ways that extend beyond moments of textual recall or literary metacommentary. Following memory scholars such as Lachmann (1990) and A. Assmann (1999), she presents a view of intertextuality as integral to the (re)negotiation of cultural memory more broadly. Later studies, such as Shannon’s (2018) work on intertextuality in Tacitus and Livy, have underscored the value of this perspective.
For this panel, we are soliciting case studies in literature of all time periods and genres that continue the investigation into the link between cultural memory and intertextuality. We welcome papers that address how intertextuality shapes the memory of cultural institutions and prominent individuals, but also how it serves to produce, revise or efface the memory of literary and philosophical traditions, genres and authors. Papers that focus more narrowly on subtopics within memory studies, such as life-writing, genealogy and (multi-)mediality, are also welcome. In keeping with the remit of cultural memory studies, we are especially interested in papers that foreground the view of both memory and intertextuality as socially and technologically mediated processes.
Questions of interest include, but are not limited to:
- What part does intertextuality play in philosophical and literary critique? How do ancient authors use intertextuality to depict emergent forms or ideas as continuous or discontinuous with pre-existing traditions?
- How can intertextuality bring about false memories of the literary tradition or tendentious misrepresentations of earlier authors?
- How does intertextual engagement with earlier authors influence canon formation and revision?
- How are intertexts themselves remembered? How are memories of specific intertexts mediated by ancient commentaries and metaliterary discourses? - How is the memory of literature constructed through “window allusions”?
- What role does intertextuality play in the process of converting communicative memory into cultural memory, as explained by J. Assmann (1992)?
- How can Lachmann’s (1997) three “models” of intertextuality—participation, troping and transformation—illuminate allusive practices in ancient literature?
Please submit anonymous abstracts for 20-minute papers as email attachments to info@classicalstudies.org by February 15, 2023 with the subject line “Intertextuality and Greek and Roman Cultural Memory.” Abstracts should be no longer than 500 words (excluding bibliography) and include the title of proposed paper. Please address questions to Hans Hansen (hhansen@smith.edu).