Meeting OIKOS Research Group Classical Literature: Narratives of Making

The OIKOS group “Classical Literature: Theory and Contexts” is inviting you to a meeting on Thursday, 6 June, 2-5 PM, in Leiden (room: Lipsius 148). 

The aim of the encounter is to get to know the ERC project FACERE, led by Bettina Reitz-Joosse in Groningen (see a brief description below). We will do so by reading and discussing together three texts that stage the process of making (a remarkable object): 

• Vulcanus’ creation of Aeneas’ shield in Vergil’s Aeneid 8.407-458 (with a commentary of your choice)

• the construction of the Trojan horse in both Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica 12.122-156 and Tryphiodorus’ Iliou Halosis 57-107 (for these texts, we suggest the following commentaries:
  
  • Campbell. A Commentary on Quintus Smyrnaeus Posthomerica XII. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 17 Jul. 1981 (e-book 2018).
    
  • Miguélez-Cavero, Laura. Triphiodorus, "The Sack of Troy": A General Study and a Commentary, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2013.

During the meeting Bettina and her team (Friederike Brunzema and Hylke de Boer) will briefly introduce the FACERE project and Vergil’s text; Berenice Verhelst (UvA) will give a short introduction to the two Greek texts. Afterwards, there will be ample time to talk about the texts together (per text ca. 40 minutes)

Participants are expected to have read the three texts in advance in order to be able to participate in the discussion.

Please register with Christoph Pieper (c.pieper hum.leidenuniv.nl) by May 30th, also indicating whether you want to have lunch in advance and want to stay for dinner afterwards.

The FACERE-project:

The FACERE project investigates ideas about making and makers in the ancient Roman world. We analyse the Roman discourse of making: poetry and prose in Greek and Latin, as well as visual depictions, such as paintings, reliefs, and mosaics, which represent processes of making. On the one hand, we aim to contribute to a new cultural history of making under the Roman empire. We bring technological, logistic, or economic dimensions of making into dialogue with a deeper understanding of the cultural values related to making in the Roman imagination, in particular its aesthetic and moral complexities. How did making relate to Roman notions about the environment? How did Roman writers and artists depict the ability and agency of different kinds of makers, and how does this relate to their social status, gender, or ethnicity? Were certain ways of making considered superior to others, and why? FACERE also investigates how discourses of making relate to Roman experience of the material world. How things were made, and how stories of their making were told or imagined, was deeply relevant to what they meant to their ancient viewers, owners, and users. We introduce the analytical concept of ‘madeness’ in order to bring making and meaning together. FACERE is funded through an ERC Starting Grant and runs from September 2023 to August 2028.