Call for Papers: Symposium Cumanum 2024
Virgil, the Virgilian Tradition, and the Question of Humour
25–29 June 2024, Villa Vergiliana, Italy
Co-Directors: Celia Campbell (Emory University), Bobby Xinyue (King’s College London).
Throughout the ages, the firm canonization of Virgil has led to an entrenched seriousness of approach and interpretation when it comes to his corpus. In other words, Virgil is, by all accounts, considered probably the least humorous poet from Graeco-Roman antiquity. Yet there are unmistakable hints (if not prolonged moments) of humour across Virgil’s literary output. In the Eclogues, the characterization of Corydon in Eclogue 2 evokes the laughably pitiful image of Polyphemus in Theocritus Idyll 11. In the Georgics, do we not smile knowingly when Virgil compares the bees to Cyclopes (G. 4.169–78)? Even the Aeneid is not above moments of slapstick: Nisus’ dung-covered face gets a laugh from Aeneas (and probably most readers) amidst the more serious commemorative moments of the games in Book 5. The way these varied types of humour share space with profound seriousness raises important questions about the aesthetics and sensibilities of Virgilian poetry for the modern reader.
However, despite the fact some essential authorial seriousness makes Virgil a good foil for humour in the works of later authors, and despite the invitations to parody or manipulation issued by the works themselves, few allowances are made by modern readers for considering the issues of wit and humour, and few concessions made to parsing tonal ambiguities.
This year’s symposium reopens critical perspectives on Virgil by seeking readings that accommodate and embrace the idea of Virgilian wit, and that trace the ways in which ancient readers, writers, and commentators similarly acknowledged the possibilities for humour afforded by the Virgilian corpus. In pursuing this theme, we hope to refresh perceptions of Virgil and Virgilian verse in ways learnedly compelling, unexpected, and amusing.
Topics to address may include, but are not limited to:
- Comedic and satiric influences upon Virgilian texts
- Humorous receptions/reworkings of Virgil (e.g. Horatian, Ovidian, Petronian, Ausonian, and the Appendix Vergiliana)
- Virgil and the traditions of mime/pantomime
- Virgilian parody/farce, including evidence from the material world (e.g. graffiti, wall-painting)
- Use of riddles, riddling language, puns, wordplay
- Appearances and role of laughter
- The interplay between pathos and bathos in Virgil’s poetry and its effect
- Humour and the role of rhetoric
- The humorous afterlife of Virgil
- Translations and the question of tonal interpretation
Invited speakers include: Sergio Casali, Andrea Cucchiarelli, Philip Hardie, Cathy Keane, Leah Kronenberg, Jim O’Hara, Costas Panayotakis, Irene Peirano Garrison, Richard Thomas, Ioannis Ziogas.
Please send abstracts of roughly 300 words to celia.m.campbell@emory.edu and bobby.xinyue@kcl.ac.uk by January 12, 2024. Papers will be 20 minutes long, with time for discussion after each. We hope to gather an inclusive group of speakers from multiple backgrounds and academic ranks, and especially encourage submissions from scholars belonging to communities underrepresented in the field.
