3rd Annual International Conference on Classical and Byzantine Studies
Program (Athens Local Time)(In the program presentations are included from all the subjects scheduled to be presented in parallel)(Note: each presentation includes at least 10 minutes for questions and discussions if available)
Monday 1 June 2020
10.00-10.30 Registration
10.30-11.30 Opening and Welcoming Remarks:
Gregory T. Papanikos, President, ATINER .
Steven Oberhelman, Vice President of International Programs, ATINER, Interim Dean & Professor of Classics, Holder of the George Sumey Jr Endowed Professorship of Liberal Arts, and Texas A&M University, USA. (Video)
Nicholas Pappas, Vice President of Academic Conferences and Meetings, ATINER & Professor of History, Sam Houston University, USA. (Video)
David Philip Wick, Professor of History, Gordon College, USA. (Video)
Tatiana Tsakiropoulou-Summers, Associate Professor of Classics, The University of Alabama, USA. (Video)
11.30-12.00 Magdalen Wing-chi Ki, Associate Professor, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong. Title: Poe, Territoriality, and the Psychology of the Wall.(PowerPoint)
The map of Antebellum America was anything but fixed in Poe’s days: beginning with the Louisiana Purchase (1803), the Westward Expansion led to the Mexican-American war (1846-8), and the 1853 Gadsden Purchase set the southern border that remains valid today. Territory refers to a wide range of locations such as home territory, neutral zones, shared space, or rival’s territory. For centuries, territoriality is a legal concept that prompts humans to create contracts and treaties, build walls, gates, fences and borders, or go to war with others due to competitions or conflicts over status, material or human resources. It plays a key role in home-building and nation-building, and helps create and justify different kinds of spaces. Donald E. Westlake famously notes that a Gothic story “is about a girl who gets a house,” but Poe’s tales present that horrors are not only linked to (patriarchal, historical, familial, financial, spatial) persecution per se. One common cause of horror is that humans become territorial and drive each other up the wall. As they cannot and will not go to the other side of the wall, they prefer to wall up the other and the self psychologically, if not physically.
12:00-12:30 Shadi Neimneh, Associate Professor, Hashemite University, Jordan. Title: Castration or Decapitation? A Feminist Reading of Two Stories by Angela Carter.(PowerPoint)
This article examines two short stories by Angela Carter, “The Bloody Chamber” (1979) and “The Executioner’s Beautiful Daughter” (1974) through a feminist lens. It argues that such stories reveal an intersection between symbolic castration and literal decapitation in the trope of silencing/oppression exercised by patriarchal figures against (female) characters. Mainly using the French version of feminist criticism, the work of Hélène Cixous in particular, as well as the theories of Michel Foucault and Sigmund Freud, the article contends that Carter uses the capital punishment of decapitation (or the threat thereof) to link beheading to the loss of agency, language, and power and thus to serve her feminist project of exposing the violence of patriarchal structures perpetrated through the sexual subjection of women. She uses decapitation to figure female silencing and inferiority and project its castrating function on those women who are threatened with this punishment or simply see it performed on others. In Carter’s stories, decapitation becomes a means of exposing sexual violence against women, allowing her to undermine patriarchal logic from within, turning it against itself. In “The Executioner’s Beautiful Daughter,” it is the male who is literally decapitated and thus symbolically castrated, not the woman. In “The Bloody Chamber,” the female victim escapes decapitation and the executioner gets killed by the victim’s mother, again symbolically castrated. Therefore, Carter revises dominant patriarchal myths and challenges attributing castration threat to men and figurative decapitation to women.
12:30-13:00 Ema Jelinkova, Assistant Professor, Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic. Title: The Prostitute as Heroine in Aphra Behn’s The Rover.(PowerPoint)
Aphra Behn, a Restoration playwright and an author of amatory fiction of unprecedented success, was obliged to live by her pen and therefore react to the demands of the market. The demand was, needless to say, for comedies featuring Restoration libertines, loose morals, coarse humour and sexual intrigue. Behn wrote in this manner as well, however, adding a satirical spin to her work. One of her sustained themes is the existence of double standards for men and women; something she was not ready to condone. In her most famous play, The Rover, Behn undermined the contemporary taste for witty, outspoken, and charming rakes, seducing and casting away many women before they settle down with a virgin heiress. In this particular play she distorted the traditional commic symmetry of impecunious gallants and wealthy virgins by introducing a love triangle and within it a prime example of the dark undercurrent present in an ostensibly comic play. Willmore, the eponymous rover, finds himself in love with Hellena, a charming female wit, while he responds to another at the same time; a famous courtesan, Angellica Bianca. He wins the affection of both but on realizing that Helena comes with a large fortune attached to her impeccable reputation, he drops Angellica. Behn showed sympathies for the embittered Angellica, and what is more, she managed to extract sympathies for her from the public by distorting the the formulaic image of a courtesan. This paper is to pay homage to the elaborate ways Aphra Behn employed to present a prostitute as the most intriguing female character of the play.
13:00-13:30 Maria Rosaria D’Acierno, Associate Professor, Università degli Studi di Napoli “Parthenope”, Italy. Title: The Role of Women in Middle-East Literature.(PowerPoint)
This talk is based on my publication Il velo che svela, in which I describe the role of women, in both the Western and Eastern world. Of course, their position has achieved different results according to the political and cultural situation of each country. Anyway, all over the world women still suffer, since the fundamental civil rights protecting them are often violated. I enhance the role of Middle-East women in literature, because, through their writings, they protect their position (Fardoxe Aqa, Fariba Vafi, Zuya Pizad, Azar Nafisi, Arjane Satrapi, Malala Yusafzai, etc.). In particular, I examine the works of Shirin Ebadi, who not only defends the women’s rights but also the ones of the people in her country suffering violence from many sides. Women from the Middle-East know that if they gain a role in education, their voice will acquire volume and strength, so that they can achieve good social position. They are trying to enhance their literary position, traditionally held by men. Through their language, they describe local and cultural events combined with personal feelings, thus, enriching the story with nuances which attract the reader. The feminine genre literature by following two trends (religious and secular), pursues the same aim: to awaken interest in women matters. The problem with these women writers is that they are almost ignored by the western literature.
13:30-14:00
Carolina Subtil Pereira, Research Fellow, CHAM – Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Portugal Title: Reception Studies: Biblical and Eastern Antiquity in the Portuguese Travellers’ Writings (16th – 17th Centuries).(PowerPoint)
Ever since ancient times, there are records of pilgrimages between Portugal and the Holy Land – this was especially true during Modern Age. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the adventurous spirit of Modern Man and the expansion of the Portuguese power into some Eastern areas resulted in the augmentation of the journeys and pilgrimages’ records written by the Portuguese travelling to Jerusalem. For the most part, these men’s travel diaries were extremely exhaustive regarding practical information about the journey, the preparation required, what they had witnessed or to whom they had spoken. In fact, descriptions of these contemporary themes held special interest, as these men aimed to create a document that would help and even encourage people to undertake journeys of this kind. However, these manuscripts contained more than trivial information and journey advice: in these writings, travelers also expressed their understanding about the Ancient History of the Near East, especially that concerning the Biblical history and the sacred places of Christianity. Nevertheless, in these same writings, several references to an extra- Biblical antiquity were found – most often, the references formulated were either about Mesopotamian or the Egyptian worlds, due to the geographic proximity; however some authors also mention – although less common – Greek and Roman Antiquity and the religious system practiced by each of these four civilizations. It is in these references to the extra-Biblical Antiquity that this paper will focus on. It aims to comprehend what motives these extremely faithful men had, which lead them to make such allusions to an extra-Biblical reality, as well as to evaluate what their perceptions about other religious systems were, and how they could associated them to the history of Christianity. Overall, this study pretends to contribute to the discussion around the Reception of Antiquity during the 16th and 17th centuries, providing elements for several investigations that allow to better understand the mentality of the Modern man, in addition to their knowledge about the past.
14:00-14:30 Abdulfettah Imamoglu, Assistant Professor, Eskisehir Osmangazi University, Turkey. Title: The Dialectic of Travel and Writing According to the Turkish Twenty-First Century Travel Literature.(PowerPoint)
Travel and writing are two components for the writer traveler who gives a literary form to a not ordinary experience that has been lived for a limited time outside the limits of an ordinary space. Travel literature represents a field where writing, as a creative and expressive occupation, becomes a matter about reporting an unusual reality that has not only an external aspect related to a discovered space but also an intrinsic side that reveals a state of “being away”. In this respect, writer travelers from the twenty-first century describe writing as a temporary space to which they are intended to be oriented for communicating their discoveries and diversions from an extraordinary and outermost standpoint, and thus emerges a dialectic between travel and writing as two facets of a very individual experience evolved under the condition of a different kind of experience of the place and time. In consideration with the relation that occurs between “being elsewhere” and “writing the elsewhere”, this paper, by taking as reference Turkish writers who represent the twenty-first century travel literature, will depict, from a comparative literature perspective, the relation which concerns the fact of writing as an extent of the act of travelling, and the act of being away as an occasion to write the unknown.
14:30-15:00 Ranko Kozic, Associate Professor, University of Belgrade, Serbia. Title: Rhode’s Theory of Relationship between Novel and Rhetoric and the Problem of Evaluating the Entire Post-Classical Greek Literature.(PowerPoint)
Close analysis of both Philostratus’ and Eunapius’ Lives of the sophists brought to light a paradoxical fact suggesting that Rohde’s theory of relationship between novel and rhetoric, although still in force, could no longer be upheld as the last cornerstone remained in its place after the author’s monumental edifice was blown up by the destructive force of dynamite. Ironically enough, his theses on the categories of narratio and its subdivision in Cicero and the author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, definitely rejected by the end of the third decade of the last century, turned out to be the only part of his grandiose construction spared to some extent by the blast and therefore still worth preserving. As the underlying cause of Rohde’s methodological shortcomings could be regarded his failure to notice the key details in Philostratus’ Lives of the sophists, with their hermeneutical potential being quite sufficient for making possible connections with the elements of Lucian’s implicit poetics, contained, among other things, in his literary canons – of decisive importance for understanding both the aesthetic tendencies in the period of the Second sophistic and novel poetics itself. This kind of deficiency in Rohde’s methodological approach provoked chain reaction in form of greater and lesser failures, with the most fateful of them originating right from his disparaging attitude towards Eunapius’ writing, where what was only slightly touched upon by Philostratus appears in its explicit form. The point in question is reflection the concept of the new rhetoric, as outlined in Phaedrus, along with some kind of a political testament formulated in Alcibiades, found in the works by the authors just referred to, something that let us conclude that the Second sophistic represented a noble attempt to apply both the above mentioned principles and testament itself to the exigencies of everyday life in Greek ethnic communities. Reviving the principles of the new rhetoric gave rise to adopting, along with the key theses, postulates and doctrines of Plato’s philosophy, also its stylistic ideals, among which for its importance stands out the ability to create quite a peculiar amalgam, with disparate, polar elements, such as the prosaic and the poetical, the serious and the laughable pulsating therein to the point of imperceptibility, something that was exemplified in Socrates’ great speech on love in Phaedrus. As the most far-reaching result brought forth by this newly emerged rhetoric could be regarded the creation of the literary concepts on Plato’s model, something that in an ideal case presupposes just the application of the method used in Phaedrus. As this very method was almost inimitable, it was a second one that remained at disposal of the men of letters, an option consisting in the use of hardly visible symbols being reminiscent of Platonic myths and having enough potential to bestow an aspect of creativity on the literary works by breathing new life into the old concept, being in some kind of metamorphic plasma continuously recycled and renovated during the whole periods of Greek literary history. Detecting these hardly visible symbols, something Rohde, along with Plato’s entire philosophy, lost sight of, represents just a prerequisite condition to adequately evaluate and elucidate works of the world’s most important literature.
15:00-15:40 Carla Luciane Klos Schoninger, PhD Student, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Title: […] As he was Protected by a Crystal Shield: The Rapture of Words in “Postscript” of Elizabeth Costello, by J. M. Coetzee.(PowerPoint)
The novel Elizabeth Costello, by the writer J. M. Coetzee ends with the chapter “Postscript: Letter from Elizabeth, Lady Chandos, to Francis Bacon”. This text refers to a letter from Hugo von Hofmannsthal, a fictional letter that Phillip would have written, Lord Chandos to Francis Bacon. In the original letter, Phillip expresses his dissatisfaction with his power of literary creation, which is already extinct. In the novel Elizabeth Costello, Phillip’s wife sent a letter to Francis Bacon, begging for help. As a wife, she considers herself a shadow of her husband, but she loves him and in the face of his suffering, she suffers as well. This text aims to analyse the description about this rapture, the rupture with words a literary creator had to face. For this, the concept of metafiction is used. The overview about metafiction concept, brought by Faria (2012), allows a better understanding on it, although Scholes, Waugh and Hutcheon approach the concept with different focuses, all consider, especially that “metafiction is fiction about fiction”. Waugh reinforces the influence of the contemporary context on literary productions and the metafictional resource would be a reflection of this condition. When criticizing, dialoguing, and discussing textual construction methods in fictional narratives it explores “the fictionality of the world outside the literary text”. In referring to themselves, according to Hutcheon, there is a continuous mirroring of human actions. Lady Chandos, Elizabeth Chandos, considers that the couple’s life would be crumbling, as if her husband was under a “crystal shield”, the words no longer reached him, he could not hear them, he couldn’t produce them. The abbreviation in the signature Elizabeth C. may refer to Elizabeth Costello herself, who at the end of her life as a writer, no longer feels able to write. So, there is an example of the “return of the author”, in which the creation process (even fictional) fulfills centrality in the text.
15:40-16:10 Gregory T. Papanikos, President, ATINER. Title: Thucydides and the Synchronous Pandemic.(PowerPoint) (Full Paper)
Thucydides survived the pestilence and gave a vivid portrayal of the Athenian Epidemic at the onset of the Peloponnesian War. He belongs to the rare group of historians who wrote history about events which had a personal experience. He was involved with the war (as an Athenian strategos) and with the epidemic (survived an infection). His History of the Peloponnesian War is a textbook approach of how historical events and facts should be researched and described. His historical methodology is based on an orthological analysis of human behaviour. Such an approach enables the researcher to interpret with reason and objectivity the existing stylized facts and personal involvements. Within this framework, this paper examines Thucydides exposition of the epidemic of 430 BCE by means of four hypotheses which underline his historical analysis of the pestilence. Then, I proceed with the verification of these hypotheses using the data generation process of the synchronous pandemic of 2020. My main conclusion is that despite all the technological progresses made by human beings with the graceful assistance of Prometheus, human nature did not change much as Thucydides so eloquently emphasized, prognosed and hoped. The evidence on synchronous pandemic supports Thucydides diagnosis of the human nature but it does not vindicate him on the hypothesis (or may be his wish) that his history would be used by future generations to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. So far, the same or similar faults seem unavoidable. It appears that these faults are embedded in human nature and cannot be avoided.
16:10-16:40 David Philip Wick, Professor of History, Gordon College, USA. Title: Classical Athenian Theater in the World of Rome.(PowerPoint)
16:40-17:10 Nicholas Pappas, Professor of History, Sam Houston State University, USA. Title: European Officers and the Greco-Albanian Forces on the Ionian Islands, 1798-1814: A Comparison in Command and Tactics(PowerPoint)
In the era of the Napoleonic wars, the Ionian Islands off the western coasts of Greece and Albania became a base of operations and an area of conflict in the Mediterranean in the years 1797-1814. In that period, Republican French, Russian, Imperial French, and British forces successively occupied these Greek-populated islands, formerly Venetian possessions. Each of these powers attempted to establish a nominally independent “Septinsular Republic” under their protectorate. There were efforts by all of these powers to organize native armed forces, raised from among Greco-Albanian refugees from the mainland–bandits (klephtes), former Ottoman irregulars (armatoloi), and clansmen from the autonomous regions of Himara, Souli, and Mani. Although these refugee warriors were skilled in the use of weapons–flintlock firearms, sabres and yataghans–they fought and were organized according to traditions and methods that were different and considered “obsolete” in early nineteenth century Europe. This study will look into the organization, training and command of these troops by Russian, French, and British officers. It will study the successes and failures of these officers in forming these native warriors into regular or semi-regular forces. It will also examine how the activities of these officers helped to develop the armed forces of the Greek War of Independence, 1821-1830.
17:10-17:40 Cahit Mete Oguz, PhD Student, Simon Fraser University, Canada. Title: Peasant Identity and Social Boundaries in Middle Byzantine Narratives.(PowerPoint)
The Byzantine peasantry remains an enigmatic character within extant historical sources due to the inherent illiteracy associated with it. Yet, through analyzing the writings of several eleventh- and twelfth-century authors a picture can be constructed of the interaction channels which bound these two polar opposites of the social fabric together. The primary nodes through which this perception was crafted was based on several important exchange channels, such as; provincial taxation, military provisioning, direct military utilization and popular political participation. The boundaries enforced by the authors serves to juxtapose the utility-focused valorization of the peasantry with the scathing way in which the ‘inferior’ peasant lifestyle is described. The pragmatic importance attributed to the peasants is primarily concerned with their economic, military and public-opinion related functions, a result of them being the overwhelming majority of the Byzantine populace. As a result, the collective respect attributed to the peasantry contrasts sharply with their imagined individuality, leading to an apparent duality in the perception of the peasantry within the mindset of the authors. This issue is demonstrated through the difficulty which the authors exhibit in trying to reconcile the peasant origins of certain figures with the extensive social mobility that leads them to positions of power. Rebellions, famines, fiscal crises, foreign invasions and other times of social turbulence provided an ample platform of discussion for the authors of Byzantine historiographical sources to engage with peasant identity and its imagination. The general implication is that each individual peasant ought to remain as part of the general undefined manpower pool, continuing to till the land and man the army. As part of that nexus he was to be coddled, persuaded, and even recruited in politics whenever able. Ideological imperatives and the traditions of the Byzantine republic ensured that peasants were respected as a functional sovereign body, but disrespected as actual living, breathing individuals.
17:40-18:20 Giuseppe Natale, Associate Professor, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA. Title: The Italian Translation of Toni Morrison’s Beloved: Linguistic and Political Implications(PowerPoint)
Literary translation is traditionally considered a process of constant approximation and refinement aimed at duplicating as closely as possible the original text, at creating some sort of dynamic equivalence of the original language. In these last years, however, the focus of Translation Studies has shifted from narrow linguistic strategies to wider humanistic discourses that view translation as a locus of cultural exchange. As considerations of cultural differences take more and more center-stage, translation is being closely scrutinized for its remarkable power in shaping the domestic perception of foreign cultures. Particular concerns are now raised regarding the distortions that a literary translation might produce in the perception of the so-called marginal cultures. This recent line of cultural investigation has led me to critically re-examine my own Italian version of Toni Morrison’s Beloved (Amatissima, 1987). In fact, Morrison’s novel, like the works of many Black female writers from the same period, seems particularly vulnerable to the violence of translation. Contemporary Black American literature, some argue, is already being “marginalized” at its inception, in its original form. A translation non-respectful of its cultural uniqueness could have the dubious power of marginalizing it twice through linguistic distortion. A close analysis of the source text reveals that Morrison’s deliberate use of Black English in Beloved has a clear-cut meaning of political rupture. In fact, for Morrison and other contemporary African-American writers the global struggle for social change is concomitant with linguistic change. Thus, Morrison’s Beloved implicitly calls for a translation capable of conveying the subversive connotations of the original language. My presentation will show how the traditional approaches available to Italian literary translators are mostly ineffective in this regard, in that they either tend to normalize the Target Text—thus effacing the disruptive nature of the Black idiom—or aim at untenable forms of equivalence between American dialect and Italian dialect. Relying on Venuti’s theories on foreignizing, I posit that in order to preserve the integrity of the original literary text the translation of Black English must favor the principle of difference rather than equivalence.
21:30-23:00 Greek Night (The event did not take place due to the limited number of attendance. Those who paid and were not able to attend will be offered a free voucher according to our policy: https://www.atiner.gr/coronavirus)
Tuesday 2 June 2020
08:00-11:00 Urban Walk (The event did not take place due to the limited number of attendance. Those who paid and were not able to attend will be offered a free voucher according to our policy: https://www.atiner.gr/coronavirus)
11:00-11:30 Moshe Gat, Professor, Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Title: The Turning Point; American Cease-Fire Initiative between Israel and Egypt, August 1970.(PowerPoint)
American diplomacy could take a pride in a year like 1970. The State Department, single-handedly and without the Soviet Union or help from any other power, successfully led Egypt and Israel to agree on the Rogers, American Secretary of State, Peace Initiative on August 1970. According to the Initiative, there would be a three-month cease-fire, during which progress would be made in the peace process under the auspices of special envoy Gunar Jarring. The cease-fire between Egypt and Israel proved American’s ability to drive the diplomatic process. The Soviet Union did not take part in moving towards a cease-fire and in fact ruled it out. In our opinion the cease-fire can be seen as a turning point in US-Egyptian relations. It was Nasser, Egyptian president, who brought about American involvement in the political process, exclusive of cooperation with the Soviets. In fact, a growing opportunity was created for the returning of American influence in Egypt, an influence that reached a low ebb during and after the Six Day War of June 1967.
11:30-12:10 Petya Andreeva, Assistant Professor, National Archaeological Institute with Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria. Title: Gladiatorial Representations in Thrace.(PowerPoint)
By assembling gladiatorial reliefs and sculptures supplemented by abundant epigraphic evidence relating to gladiatorial combats and wild beasts hunts in Roman Thrace, the study on the degree to which the Thracians adopted these Roman spectacles as their own may reach completion. The stone announcements advertising the bloody entertainments before they were held, accompanied by reliefs giving a vivid picture of different parts of the gladiatorial displays indicate their increasing popularity in Thracian lands. It is well known, that these spectacles lasted all day long, sometimes even several days in a row, being divided into distinct parts, as the wild beast hunts usually took place in the morning, the executions were performed around noon, followed by gladiatorial combats in the afternoon. Given the official nature of these inscriptions and the prominent places where they were set up, it is assumed that the announcements were meant not only to advertise the upcoming spectacles, but also to give public acknowledgement to the organizers long afterwards. Professional gladiators were usually involved in the spectacular combats, provided by the editor, the person who organized the bloody games. Several recent studies made impressive progress in achieving higher level of accuracy in differentiating depictions of distinct categories of gladiators, thus succeeding in clarifying many vague and inaccurate descriptions and identifications of such representations in the Roman provinces. They provide an excellent starting point to make an approach of precise identification of the gladiatorial images found in Thracian lands. This, in turn, would reveal the most common gladiatorial categories and combats, respectively, that were staged in the arenas of Thrace. Given the existing hierarchy of gladiators according to the palus system and the fact that they cost different amounts, the study could provide an idea of the degree of financial burden in holding bloody spectacles in Roman Thrace. The inflationary costs of gladiators, becoming clear from the legislation tabled in AD 177 in the joint reign of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, known as Aes Italicense or Senatus consultum de pretiis gladiatorum minuendis, should also be taken into account. This is directly related to the policy of munificence in Thrace, which included, just as at other Roman provinces, not only contributions to the architectural fabric of the city, but also generous provision of festivals and spectacles. It is widely accepted that gladiatorial combats had a strong Romanizing impact on local population in the Roman provinces. However, the spread of these spectacles in Thrace could indicate broader cultural changes under the Roman rule. The presence of gladiatorial representations in everyday life of the Thracians, such as images on terracotta lamps, bronze and ceramic vessels, and a number of figurines used even as chariot decorations, raises the question if they were a matter of fashion, propaganda or an important bridge between the cultural worlds of Thracians and Romans.
12:10-12:40 Vasiliki Sakellariou, PhD Candidate, University of Caen Normandy, France. Title: The Representation of A Society in Distress: Hugo Bettauer’s Novel The Joyless Street Through its Filmic Adaptation.(PowerPoint)
Published as a serial-novel (feuilleton) in 1923, Hugo Bettauer’s crime novel The Joyless Street, was adapted for the cinema in 1925 by Georg Wilhelm Pabst, a major figure of the German New Objectivity artistic movement. The novel attempts to shed light on the deplorable living conditions of the Viennese population wrecked by the socio-economic consequences of the Great War while showing that crime was the “means” justified by the “end”. Subjected to censorship, its filmic adaptation allows us to explore and to study the various visions of the inter-war Viennese society through the prism of literature and cinema. This paper is an attempt to demonstrate how these adaptations aimed to manipulate not only the German and Austrian, but also the international public opinion about the dreadful situation in Vienna during the interwar period. It will also focus on the importance of “mass literature” as a form of “mass” and “social media” combining fiction and reality. With reference to great number of film critics published in newspaper during its projection, not only in Austria and in Germany, but also in the United States, it will be shown why the short version of the movie released to the public, despite its enormous success, only served publicity purposes. Finally, it will also be shown how via his novels, Hugo Bettauer has become a pioneer of the social crime novel, in addition to him being a spokesperson for women’s rights.
12:40-13:10 Roshanak Vatani, PhD Student, Islamic Azad University, Kerman Branch, Iran. Title: The Representation of the Unrepresented: A Study of Anita Brookner’s Freeze-Frame Narrative in her Novel Hotel du Lac.(PowerPoint)
This paper attempts to delineate how Anita Brookner’s “freeze-frame” narrative in Hotel du Lac visualizes the internalized fears, desires and responses of female characters who are experiencing a lonely life. As a modern writer, Brookner adopts the objective and visual sight over more subjective narrative, for her realism is not for mere decoration but to transmit the quotidian things in order to externalize her characters’ internal self without coloring them with romantic illusions. By recording the ordinary experiences and representing the material world she succeeds to depict how her female protagonist, Edith, undergoes the process of attaining self-awareness to confront her existential loneliness rather than escaping from it. This calculated method helps the reader to experience the fluid and instable reality through his/her eyes rather than mind and also contributes to the narrator’s effort to “represent the unrepresented” world of women which is marred by a patriarchal society.
13:10-13:40 Tomasz Bednarek, PhD Student, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland. Title: Allegorical Interpretation of the Cherubs in De Cherubim by Philo of Alexandria.(PowerPoint)
Philo of Alexandria is regardes as one of the greatest thinker of Alexandrian Judaism. In his many works he tried to reconcile the biblical description of the world with a worldview based on Greek philosophy. De Cherubim is one of the exegetical works of Philo, included in the Allegorical Commentary. It is written in an allegorical and analytical spirit. Contrary to the title itself, only a dozen or so of its points are devoted to the interpretation of the cherubs themselves. In paragraphs 21-31, Philo interprets the mysterious characters of the cherubs, who, according to the Book of Genesis, were supposed to guard the entrances to the garden of Eden, as well as the burning sword. The Alexandrian thinker shows three ways to interpret the cherubs. Two of them are cosmological, while the third one, described as the effect of illumination, has a more theological character. My purpose is to analyze the allegorical interpretation of the cherubs and the sword by Philo. To make the picture of alegoresis complete, the author of this paper will try to reconstruct the historical and cultural context of Philo’s activities, as well as the sources of his interpretation. The paper will present arguments in favor of the thesis that at least part of the material from the cosmological allegoresis was taken from the works of earlier philosophers (mainly Plato). It is also extremely important to examine the problem of the purpose of allegorical interpretation of this biblical pericope.
13:40-14:10 Alessio Ranno, PhD Student, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Italy. Title: Pindaric Intertextuality in Sophocles’ Trachiniae (497-530)(PowerPoint)
The first stasimon of Sophocles’ Trachiniae (497-530), in which the Chorus describes the struggle between Heracles and Achelous for the hand of Deianeira, has been taken into account by scholars as one of the most striking examples of the intertextual relationship between Sophoclean tragedy and the genres of the ancient Greek poetic tradition, both epic and lyric (see in particular Rodighiero 2008a; 2008b; 2012: 61-101), and one of his most controversial and thought-provoking passages in terms of textual problems. In this paper I specifically focus on the relationship between the stasimon and epinician poetry, which has a pervasive influence on the language and imagery of the Sophoclean song (see García Romero 2009 and Swift 2011, along with the aforementioned bibliographic references). My purpose is not only to provide further insight into Sophocles’ use of epinician vocabulary and style in order to achieve certain ecphrastic and narrative effects, but also to show that the connection of the stasimon to this lyric genre is further supported by concrete reminiscences of two Pindaric passages from Isthmian 4 and Nemean 1, which are purposefully juxtaposed in order to provide a description of Heracles as a suitable human opponent of the river-god Achelous.
14:10-14:30 Gennieve Singson, Head, English Department, Saint Ferdinand College, Philippines. Title: Disavowal of Acknowledged ‘Truths’: Ideology, Symbol And Culture In The Filipino Short Story, Morning in Nagrebcan.(PowerPoint)
The paper analyzed the short story, Morning in Nagrebcan by Manuel E. Arguilla, a Filipino considered as one of the unsung heroes during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines for being a guerilla (a member of an unofficial military group constituted to overthrow the Japanese tyrants) himself and for using the overriding power of the pen. Unknown to the enemies, he hid in the comfort of his riveting stories in English to disclose the maneuverings done to the poor Filipinos during the 1940s. The study looked into various types of issues that fundamentally hinged on class, gender, and power relations, among many others. In examining these issues, an ideological, symbolical, and cultural reading of the text was employed in the contexts of Louis Althusser, Matthew Arnold, and Jacques Lacan, respectively. The Derridean method of deconstruction was also used to examine some major portions of the story.
14:30-15:00 Fernando Gil, Fellow, The Royal Historical Society, UK. Title: Esoteric in Greece: Rites, Rituals and Practices in the Antiquity Texts. (PowerPoint)
The term “esoteric” originates from the Greek for ‘inner’, not however with the sense of “psychic”, “spiritual”, or “mystical”, but with a purely local meaning of being ‘further within’ something. The antonym is “exoteric”, namely “external”. The Greek expressions for esoteric and exoteric were mostly employed in reference to ancient mystery cults, such as the Eleusinian mysteries or Mithra-cults, in which one must first be ‘consecrated’ in a special ceremony and afterwards is prohibited to reveal any of the knowledge acquired during the initiation, under pain of death. This constitutes ‘secret knowledge’ in a real way. From ancient mystery cults, the concepts of esoteric and exoteric knowledge spread to Greek philosophical schools. Exactly in the same way that initiation was instituted among these cults which mandated a special, secret kind of knowledge, so Greek philosophical schools of Pythagoras and Plato conveyed special kinds of knowledge and teachings among their closest disciples which were not to be communicated to others. On the other hand, a Christian believer might see miracles in a similar light, as expressions of some higher or divinely inspired knowledge, which would allow healing to take place at the mere touch or presence of a famous personage or saint, such as Simeon Stylites. The question is how to balance such claims within the various frameworks of ancient thought. Here distinctions can be made between different types of healing or magical events, such as healing through technical rituals, recitations of incantations, or therapeutic prescriptions (all esoteric knowledge of sorts), verses the direct inspirational healing of a famous wonderworker, such as Apollonius of Tyana. In the same way practiced secret techne in the ancient world, best known through the writings of Artemidorus. It is difficult to know how this knowledge actually operated and whether dreams reflected actual realities or were limited to flights of imagination. It seems clear, however, that dreams were firmly rooted in the geography of everyday life and reflected the normal landscapes of human life, although within a theoretical mantic framework aimed at predicting the future. Nevertheless, the associations between visions and dreams and their interpretations constitute another grey area of esoteric knowledge, in which the associative thought processes which produce the predictions are never actually expounded or even discussed in ancient texts, but are assumed to be the private knowledge of professional dream interpreters. With the advent of Christianity, the situation changes, since to some extent the distinction between religious and secular knowledge becomes sharper; the former is based upon faith and belief, while the latter is perceived as being more scientific and rational. Those who either accept or fail to accept Christian faith as part of their world view and approach to ‘true’ knowledge. This brings us into the murky world of the Hermetica and Gnostic wisdom, which contrasts with the philosophical views of philosophers devoted to discovering the laws of nature.
15:00-15:30 Manyaka Toko Djockoua, Professor Emeritus, University of Yaoundé 1, Cameroon. Title: The Harlem Renaissance and African Cosmology: Trees and Rivers in Selected Poems of Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen.(PowerPoint)
African cosmology has been a major source of inspiration to African American writers, and specifically to the poets of the Harlem Renaissance. This article, which is informed by myth criticism and some tenets of the Harlem Renaissance, studies Toomer’s “Song of the Son,” Hughes’s “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” and Cullen’s “Heritage” in a bid to demonstrate that in these poems, trees and rivers are first and foremost expression of freedom, even if they stand as metaphors for ancestry. Their significance therefore deviates from the original meanings that they are usually given in African cosmology. Toomer, Hughes and Cullen use trees and rivers not only to revisit the past, but essentially to declare their independence from the stifling tradition-bound culture of their homeland (Africa), and the race-bound culture of their host land (America). In other words, trees and rivers outline the role of revolutionary literature, which liaises between the past and the present that it interrogates. In their poems, the authors build a cultural space that is more oriented towards the present and the future. They thus assert their transnational/transcontinental identity as African Americans. This assertion finds a resonant echo in the ever-changing highly globalized twenty-first- century world.
15:30-16:00 Alin Goron, PhD Student, “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia, Romania. Title: The Promotion of Atheism as a Principle of Marxist Ideology. Case Study: Romania.(PowerPoint)
“Christianity, like any other revolutionary movement, was created by the masses,” wrote Friedrich Engels. Primary Christianity represented the spiritual-religious expression of the chained population struggling for emancipation. Like socialism in the modern era, Christianity exercised control over the masses, as it offered them the consciousness of belonging to a social category devoid of rights, which opposed the ruling class that wished to perpetuate the state of fact. Also in this context, we recall the famous quotation from Marx, according to which religion is the “opium of the people”. With the starting point of the Marxist doctrine in relation to the Christian religion, we can deduce the attitude of the communist authorities in relation to the Christian religion. We will not conceptualize the relations between the state and the Church, as it is a topic that has aroused wide debates and publications. However, an analysis through the concept of mass education is needed to magnify this vision. Marxist ideology involves denying the dogmas of the Christian religion in favor of atheism. But the great dilemma remains that of whether or not the regime succeeded in imposing its own vision in relation to a deep social mind attached to Christian values and which showed little openness to new visions that in the West had already been shaped since the Enlightenment. Outlining an objective image on this sensitive topic, we have in front the archival documents but also a number of rumors that still arouse discussion. For example, some say the the idea that Gheorghiu-Dej himself, (the first leader of communist regime in Romania, who shared power with Ana Pauker, Teohari Georgescu and Vasile Luca) would have confessed his sins and shared (religious habit after confessing the sins to a orthodox preist) when he felt that his end was approaching. Otherwise there is talk of politicians of the regime who, despite the acceptance of official atheist dogma, would not have abandoned the Christian religion. But we cannot grant them the status of truthful sources, but only the status of popular myths. But the overlapping of religious theme with revolutionary socialism is as old as it is today. The similarities between the two are evident to a certain extent, that of the two theories, creation or evolutionism. An interesting article by Michael Löwy and Mariana Ortega Brena about the history of the communist movement in Latin America outlines the image of the famous revolutionary Carlos Mariátegui, whose romantic vision of revolutionary socialism is transposed to religious mysticism. The bibliography used in this study includes both archival documents, those belonging to the Central National Historical Archives, the Fund of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party, the Section of Agitation and Propaganda, as well as articles such as K. Mathew Kurian’s, Marxism and Christianity published in Social Scientist, Michael Löwy, Mariana Ortega Brena, Communism and religion: José Carlos Mariátegui’s Revolutionary Mysticism, Latin American Perspectives. In this study, I will therefore try to draw the analogy between the ideas of primary Christianity and socialism, issues that arouse wide debate, but also the impact of ubiquitously promoting the Marxist doctrine of atheism in an East-European states, rather conservatively in the immediate period, following the Second World War.
20:00-21:30 Dinner (The event did not take place due to the limited number of attendance. Those who paid and were not able to attend will be offered a free voucher according to our policy: https://www.atiner.gr/coronavirus)
Wednesday 3 June 2020Educational Islands Cruise
(The event did not take place due to the limited number of attendance. Those who paid and were not able to attend will be offered a free voucher according to our policy: https://www.atiner.gr/coronavirus)
Thursday 4 June 2020Delphi Tour
(The event did not take place due to the limited number of attendance. Those who paid and were not able to attend will be offered a free voucher according to our policy: https://www.atiner.gr/coronavirus)
