Tartu spring-autumn 2021

Old Call for Papers, issued in 2019:

Form and Genre of Humanist Greek. Hellenostephanos II symposion: Tartu, April 16-18th, 2020. The questions of form and genre have been in the centre of literary theory since the Poetics and Rhetoric of Aristotle, even if we cannot yet see explicit rules regarding lyric poetry in these works. After Horace and Perrotti, the Early Modern poetic theory reached its summit in Scaliger’s Poetics, being already both descriptive and prescriptive, and presening a foundation for the development of main genres of Neo-Latin poetry, such as described by Ijsewijn. The research on Humanist Greek poetry and poetics has usually followed in the footsteps of the study of Neo-Latin. After W. Ludwig’s monograph and three recent collective works on Humanist Greek (edited by S. Weise; J. Päll and I. Volt; N. Constantinidou and H. Lamers) the time has arrived to ask, whether there is also a specific, Humanist Greek poetics? Are there any Humanist Greek genres, which don’t occur (or occur less) in Neo-Latin, or are there any genre rules which are specific to humanist Greek only? We ask our participants to forget for a moment the genre system of Neo-Latin poetry, to neglect for a brief while the basic division of poetry genres by occasions and their social functions, and to think of other formal and generic features instead: what does make a humanist Greek epos, epyllion, oratio metrica, paraphrasis, cento, eidyllion, elegia, parodia, epigram, carmen anagrammaticum, carmen alphabeticum, carmen acrostichicum, technopaignion etc. or Humanist Greek prose genres: letter, hypomnema, speech etc.. What is the role of metre, general structure, language, puns in Humanist Greek poetry? How did the students learn to write this? Can (or should) we speak of this poetry as of poetry outside its social functions? We’ll meet in Tartu, in April 16-18th 2020 (starting with registration on Thursday and finishing at Saturday noon with a general discussion) for a brief discussion of these topics, presented either as short case studies (30 min) or longer overview papers (60 min), dedicated on one genre or one general problem. Selected papers from the seminar (possibly expanded with others on similar topics) will be published (after peer-reviewing process) during the first half of 2021, in the volume Hellenostephanos II, edited by Janika Päll and Ivo Volt. For participants of the seminar we offer hotel room, meals, conference materials and good discussion, as well as a guided visit to the exhibition of the Plantines at Tartu University library. We also have a possibility to give out a couple of travel stipendia for participants who don’t receive travel allowances from their universities (these can be applied for after the selection of papers). Please send the abstracts to: Janika.Pallutee by February 10th, 2020. The notitfications of acceptance and the program will be sent out on February 17th. Organised by: Helleno-Nordica (Swedish Research Council's project (2016-01881, lead by Johanna Akujärvi, Lund University) team at Tartu University Library (resp. and more info from: J. Päll, Janika.Pallutee), in collaboration with a department of Classical Philology, Tartu University College of Foreign Languages and Cultures.