Nonnus of Panopolis in Context. Poetry and Cultural Milieu in Late Antiquity

UNIVERSITY OF CRETE
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOLOGY





International Conference

Nonnus of Panopolis in Context Poetry and Cultural Milieu in Late Antiquity
Rethymno - May 13-15, 2011
Students' Cultural Center 'Xenia'
16 Sofokli Venizelou Street, Rethymno


Double-faced hermaic stele depicting Dionysus and Ariadne, Eleutherna (Crete), Sector I, 2nd cent. AD.

The Department of Philology of the University of Crete organises in Rethymno, Crete, 13-15 May 2011, the first international conference on the late antique poet Nonnus of Panopolis. The nine sessions of the conference cover various aspects of Nonnus' poetry, poetic technique, educational, literary and cultural background, ambience and afterlife. The twenty two speakers, mainly from across Europe, include some well established scholars, but mostly scholars in their mid-forties and a few promising students of a younger generation. The conference will pay equal attention to the Dionysiaca and the Paraphrasis of the Gospel of St John. New readings of key-passages in both poems will be presented, novel approaches to Nonnus' relationship with earlier and contemporary literature, new insights into Nonnus' visual world, his reception by later poets, even modern authors, and an attempt to redefine the notion of the Nonnian 'School'. The conference rather than seeing Nonnus as a 'follower' or 'imitator' explores what he has to say as an erudite late antique poet who absorbs and transforms a long and varied literary and philosophical past.
The Proceedings will be published as a Supplement to the series 'Trends in Classics' directed by Professors Antonios Rengakos (Thessaloniki) and Franco Montanari (Venice) with DeGruyter.

For further enquiries please contact Konstantinos Spanoudakis


P R O G R A M

Friday 13 May 2011
,

17:30-20:30 Registration

Welcome Speeches

Opening Speech Enrico Livrea (Florence)
Nonnus and the Orphic Argonautica

19:00-19:30 Break

Session 1: Nonnus and Visual Arts

Michael Paschalis, Chair

Gianfranco Agosti (Udine)
Nonnus' Visual World

Laura Miguélez-Cavero (Salamanca)
Personifications and their Impact in the Dionysiaca

Saturday 14 May, 10:00-13:30

Session 2: Nonnus and the Literary Past (part 1)
Konstantinos Spanoudakis, Chair

Jane Lightfoot (Oxford)
Nonnus and the Oracles

Hélène Frangoulis (Toulouse)
Nonnus and Homeric Similes: the Image of Lions in the Dionysiaca

Marta Otlewska (Berlin)
The Dionysiaca and the Orphic Hymns

11:30-12:00 Break

Session 2: Nonnus and the Literary Past (part 2)
Tasos Nikolaidis, Chair

Maria Ypsilanti (Nicosia)
The Paraphrasis and the Poetic Past: an Intertextual Reading of Selected Passages

Katerina Carvounis (Cambridge)
Persuasion in Nonnus' Dionysiaca

Session 3: The Style of Nonnus

Enrico Magnelli (Florence)
Appositives in Nonnus' Hexameter

Saturday 14 May, 18:00-20:00

Session 4: The 'School' of Nonnus

Pierre Chuvin, Chair

Delphine Lauritzen (Bologna/Paris)
Nonnus in Gaza

Daria Gigli (Florence)
John of Gaza and Poetic Inspiration: Emotional Upheaval and Ecstasy in a Neoplatonic Poet

Mary Whitby (Oxford)
The Last Nonnian Hexameters? George of Pisidia's Poem On Human Life

Claudio De Stefani (Naples)
The End of the Nonnian 'School'. Some Final Remarks

Sunday 15 May, 10:00-13:30

Session 5: Nonnus and Contemporary Society

Gianfranco Agosti, Chair

Nina Aringer (Vienna)
The Heros' Journey of Dionysos as an Individuation of an Age.
Approaching the Dionysiaca under the perspective of Jungian Archetypes and the Monomythos of Joseph Campbell

Session 6: Nonnus and Latin Literature


Michael Paschalis (Rethymno)
Ovid and Nonnus: Metamorphosis and poikilon eidos

Session 7: Nonnus' Afterlife


Domenico Accorinti (Pisa)
Simone Weil, Reader of the Dionysiaca

11:30-12:00 Break

Session 8: Nonnus and Late Antique Paideia

Enrico Magnelli, Chair

David Hernández de la Fuente (Madrid/Potsdam)
Neoplatonic Form and Content in the Dionysiaca: the Cases of Phaeton and Beroe

Nicole Kröll (Vienna)
Rhetorical Elements in the Ampelus Episode

Rosa García-Gasco (Madrid)
Nonnus' Mystic Vocabulary Revisited: Mystis in Dionysiaca 9.111-131

Sunday 15 May, 18:00-20:00


Session 9: Nonnus and Christianity

Enrico Livrea, Chair

Konstantinos Spanoudakis (Rethymno)
The Shield of Salvation: Dionysus' Shield in the Dionysiaca

Robert Shorrock (Eton College)
Ariadne on Naxos

Pierre Chuvin (Paris)
Coming to Grips with an Old Problem, the Religion of Nonnus:
which kind of Beliefs, Encapsulated in which kind of Poem?

20:00 Concluding Remarks