"Classics and Robert Graves: a relationship in literature, translation and
adaptation"
19th September, 31st October, 21st November 2009
This series of three interdisciplinary workshops in the School of Classics,
University of St Andrews will allow for the discussion and re-evaluation of
the work of Robert Graves in relation to the discipline of Classics. The
workshops will provide a platform for the exploration of subjects such as
adaptation of Graves’ novels for film, stage or radio (I Claudius was
adapted for all three media); his relationship with T.E. Lawrence (who
translated The Odyssey of Homer (1932); his impact via Classics on twentieth
century poetry; his translations from Latin into English; his understanding
of Greek myth; the historical novel; the use of classical subjects in his
poetry; the reception of his novels (including adaptations by scriptwriters
for stage and screen) and the influence of his novels, translations and
ideas on the discipline itself and public consciousness. Other conferences
and edited papers have addressed wider issues around Graves’ poetry and
literature but this is an opportunity for the relationship between the
discipline itself and the body of his work to be revisited and reviewed
within an interdisciplinary framework.
The workshops are to be in held at The School of Classics, University of St
Andrews:
~16th September Programme~
9.00 welcome ~ Alisdair Gibson
9.15-10.15 ~ Andrew Bennett, University of Bristol “‘It’s readable all
right, but it’s not history’: Robert Graves’s Claudian Novels and the
Impossibility of Historical Fiction”
10.15-11.15 ~ Shaun Tougher, University of Cardiff ‘ The Historical
Novelist: Count Belisarius and the legacy of Robert Graves’
11.45-12.45 ~ Duncan Kennedy & Ellen O’Gorman University of Bristol ‘The
debate of Livy and Pollio in I, Claudius Ch. 9’
2 -3.00 ~ Sheila Murnaghan, University of Pennsylvania ‘Homer’s Daughter:
Graves’ Vera Historia’
3 -4.00 ~ Sonia Sabnis, Reed College (Portland, Oregon) ‘The Golden Ass and
the Golden Warrior: Robert Graves, T. E. Lawrence, and Apuleius’
4..20 -5.20 ~ Jonathan Perry, University of South Florida ‘Con beffarda
irriverenza’:Graves’ Augustus in Mussolini’s Italy’
~ ~ ~
The second and third workshops in the series are on Saturday 31st October:
John Burnside, (University of St Andrews), Fran Brearton (Queen’s University
Belfast), Mick Morris, (Open University), Philip Burton (University of
Birmingham), Sibylle Ihm (Georg-August-University Gottingen).
and Saturday 21st November 2009: Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (University of
Edinburgh), Robert Davis (University of Glasgow), Richard Thomas (Harvard
University), Alisdair Gibson (University of St Andrews), Jon Coulston
(University of St Andrews), Tom Palaima, (University of Texas).
~The programme and booking form are online at~
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/classics/conferences/RbtGraves/index.shtml
Please contact Margaret Goudie at <classcon AT st-andrews.ac.uk> if you have
any enquiry relating to the booking.
Any further queries to Alisdair Gibson, email <aggg AT st-andrews.ac.uk>. The
School of Classics, University of St Andrews, Swallowgate, St Andrews,
Scotland, KY16 9AL
