Seen on the Classicists list:
‘EPIC POETRY AND FLAVIAN CULTURE’
Chairs: Emma Buckley (St Andrews), Helen Lovatt (Nottingham) and Gesine Manuwald
(UCL).To form a conference panel at the sixth Celtic Conference in Classics,
Edinburgh, 28-31 July, 2010.Flavian Rome was a Rome in the process of radical re-making, experiencing a
traumatic change in ruling dynasty and responding to the demands of a new
imperial experience that had to distance itself from the Julio-Claudian regime
even as it replicated it. Vespasian, Titus and Domitian had to re-model the
Principate in a new image, all the while re-imagining it as the rightful and
‘natural’ continuation of the old order, provoking a schizophrenic blend of
imitation, disjunction and innovation in their attempts to forge a new ideology
of rule. But what does all this have to do with Flavian epic? How do Valerius
Flaccus, Statius and Silius Italicus in their poetry respond to the changing
social, political and material contexts of their culture? And to what extent
can a group of texts so often read purely for their intertextual pyrotechnics
be reintegrated with the study of the Flavian age more generally?The Flavian Epic Network, headed by Helen Lovatt and Gesine Manuwald, invite
suggestions for papers on this theme (40 minutes in length) concerning, for
instance, interactions between the Flavian epicists; Flavian epic’s
relationship with other forms of contemporary poetry and prose; connections
between Flavian epic and the art, archaeology and history of the period.Send a proposed title and an abstract of max. 300 words to Emma Buckley:
eb221 AT st-andrews.ac.uk
by November 15, 2009
For further information about the sixth Celtic Conference in Classics contact:
Founder and Organiser: Anton Powell, powellanton AT btopenworld.com
Organiser in Edinburgh: Richard Rawles, Richard.Rawles AT ed.ac.uk
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