APA 144th Annual Meeting: 3-6 January 2013, Seattle, WA
Campanian Cultures: Poetics, Location and Identity
Panel Organizers: Ian Fielding (Warwick); Carole Newlands (UC-Boulder)
The region of Campania was an important point of intersection between the cultures of antiquity. As the center of the Greek colonial presence in mainland Italy, Campania later became a focus for Roman interest in Hellenistic culture. For educated individuals like Cicero, Seneca and Pliny the Younger, the region was associated with artistic and intellectual pursuits, but also with the pursuit of luxury and excess. The history of Campania’s relationship with Rome has been traced in e.g. D’Arms 1970, Frederiksen 1984, Lomas 1993 and Leiwo 1994. The purpose of this panel is to prompt new inquiries into Campania’s distinctive multicultural identity.
With the wealth of textual and material evidence from ancient Campania, this panel will allow specialists from across a broad disciplinary spectrum to examine the interaction of different forms of cultural practice in the development of local identity. Papers might seek (1) to situate literary representations of Campania within their social and historical contexts, or (2) to consider how those representations were themselves influential in cultivating the region’s identity.
Significant issues to be considered include, for (1): how distinct were the individual towns and cities within Campania, and what kind of relationships existed between them? For instance, the strong sense of Greekness maintained in Naples has been shown to have an important bearing on the poetry of Statius, a native of the city. But is it possible to account for cultural variations between texts from Naples and texts from the surrounding area? For (2): how can the literary representations of specific loci within Campania be seen to figure the local and trans-local (Greek, Roman, Oscan) aspects of the region’s identity? Virgil, for example, depicts places such as Cumae and Lake Avernus in terms of the Greek literary tradition, and his association with the Bay of Naples continued to attract poetic imitators, such as Silius Italicus.
Contributors are invited to consider not only Campania’s development before and during the Roman period, but also its reception in later traditions of antiquity. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, long after the decline of its material resources, the area around Baiae retained much of the cultural significance it had held in the classical period. Through an examination of Campania’s varied cultural legacy, this panel aims to further our appreciation of its importance for the history of classical literature.
Abstracts must be received in the APA office by February 1, 2012. Please send an anonymous abstract as a PDF attachment to apameetings AT sas.upenn.edu. Be sure to mention the title of the panel and provide complete contact information and any AV requests in the body of your email. All submissions will be reviewed anonymously. You will be notified of our decision by March 1, 2012.
rogueclassicism 