CFP
Roman Poets as Characters in Contemporary Literature
Université Côte d’Azur
May 29-31st, 2025
The conference featuring keynote speakers invites proposals for papers to be delivered during three-day stay (May 29-31) at the Université Cote d’Azur. Giampiero Scafoglio (Université Côte d’Azur) and Zara Torlone (Miami University, USA) are eager to explore the “afterlife” of Roman poets as they find their representation in contemporary national literatures. The examples include but are not limited to the following themes:
- Roman poets as characters featured in the plots of modern and contemporary European novels
- Roman poets as the interlocutors or epistolary addressees of contemporary writers
- Roman poets as characters or addressees in non-European literatures
Please send an abstract (no more than 300 words) to torlonzm@miamioh.edu by January 31st, 2025. The participants will receive the acceptance notifications by February 15th, 2025 so that the arrangements to travel can be made in in advance. The conference organizers will cover some meals during the conference. There will no conference registration fees. The conference will result in an edited volume.
Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
- Alessandro Barchiesi, “Virgil as a character in Sebastiano Vassalli's Il numero infinito”
- Stephanie Quinn “Hermann Broch's Vergil the Man: The Poet as Character in The Death of Virgil.”
- Giampiero Scafoglio, “"Lucretius as a character in Guido Della Valle's Kypris"
- Fabio Stok, “Catullus as a character in Daisy Dunn's Catullus' Bedsread: the Life of Rome’s most erotic poet (2016) and Daniele Coluzzi's Odio ed amo (2023)”.
- Zara Torlone, “Talking with the Un/Dead: Alexander Pushkin’s Epistle “To Ovid” and Joseph Brodsky’s ‘Letter to Horace’”
- Étienne Wolff, “Ausonius as a character in Felix Dahn's Bissula”.
With the participation of the writer Benita Kane Jaro.
