International Seminar (Anke Walter)

Im Rahmen eines neuen Veranstaltungstyps am Institut für Klassische Philologie, dem International Seminar, wird am 21.12. und 22.12. Anke Walter (Newcastle University) zu Gast sein. In der Veranstaltung, die aus einem Vorlesungs- und Seminarteil besteht, steht folgendes Thema im Mittelpunkt:

Festivals, and in particular the individual festive moment in all its vivid details is a central motif in Horace’s Odes. As I will show in my lecture, this festive moment is usually characterised by its unavailability: it remains in the realm of anticipation, instead of fully becoming a present reality. In his Carmen saeculare and Ode 4.6, by contrast, Horace styles himself as the master of festive time, who fills the festive moment with Rome’s past, present, and future, as well as with images of cyclical and linear time. Both kinds of conceiving of festive time are equally valid forms of experiencing festivity, which Horace makes immortal in his work.
In the seminar, we will broaden our focus and examine a couple of festive poems from authors such as Horace, Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid. We will compare the way they use the motif of the festival to strengthen or undercut public commemoration in Rome, to complicate or sharpen their authorial persona, and to underscore their own literary agenda. Festivals, as we shall see, can function as complex sites of literary self-reflexion.

Nähere Informationen zur Teilnahme gibt es im dazugehörigen OPAL-Kurs.