On Monday 3 December 2018, we have the honor to welcome Andreas Rhoby from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, who kindly agreed to give a guest lecture as a contribution to our MA course on Byzantine literature. Andreas Rhoby is an expert on Byzantine inscriptions, and he will introduce this topic in his guest lecture.
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Crash Course in Greek Palaeography
The Greek department of Ghent University offers a one-day course in Greek paleography in collaboration with the Research School OIKOS. The course is intended for MA students, ResMA students and PhDs working in the areas of Ancient History, Classics and Ancient Civilizations with a good command of Greek. It offers an intensive introduction into Greek paleography from the Hellenistic period until the end of the Middle Ages and is specifically aimed at acquiring practical skills for research involving literary and documentary papyri and literary manuscripts.
Rachele Ricceri, Kopiëren, lezen en leren: filologie en boekproductie in Byzantium
This lecture is organised by the Griekenlandcentrum, the Centre for Hellenic Studies at Ghent University, and will be given in Dutch.
Abstract
Onze kennis van de Griekse klassieke en Middeleeuwse literaire cultuur is onverbrekelijk verbonden met de manuscripten die in het hele Byzantijnse millennium geproduceerd werden. De teksten die jonge Byzantijnen tegenkwamen in hun schoolcurricula hebben gemakkelijker overleefd tot onze dagen. Anderzijds werden veel literaire werken die in Byzantium minder populair waren niet meer gekopieerd en zijn daarom onherroepelijk verloren.
Deze lezing onderzoekt hoe de boeken die Byzantijnen op school gebruikten eruit zagen. Werden er specifieke teksten geschreven voor leerlingen? En wat zijn de belangrijkste kenmerken van Byzantijnse schoolboeken? Door middel van een aantal afbeeldingen zullen we ingaan op de fascinerende wereld van de Byzantijnse boekproductie om inzicht te krijgen in hoe en wat Middeleeuwse Grieken lazen.
Practical information
Date & time: Wednesday 12 December 2018, 20:00 pm
Location: Auditorium 4 Jaap Kruithof (Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Gent)
Crash Course in Greek Palaeography
The Greek department of Ghent University offers a two-day course in Greek paleography in collaboration with the Research School OIKOS. The course is intended for (advanced) students and PhDs in Classics, Ancient History and Ancient Civilizations with a good command of Greek. It offers an intensive introduction into Greek paleography from the Hellenistic period until the end of the Middle Ages and is specifically aimed at acquiring practical skills to read literary and documentary papyri and literary manuscripts from the originals.
Programme
Six lectures will give a chronological overview of the development of Greek handwriting, each followed by a practice session reading relevant extracts from papyri and manuscripts in smaller groups under supervision. The first day (Monday) will focus on documentary and literary papyri and we will be working with original papyri from the papyrus collection of the Ghent University Library. The second day (Tuesday) we will continue with literary manuscripts.
Monday 3 February 2020
13:00-14:00 Documentary and literary papyri from the Graeco-Roman period (Dr. Joanne Stolk)
14:00-15:00 Practice papyri of the Graeco-Roman period
15:00-15:30 Coffee break
15:30-16:30 Documentary and literary papyri from the Byzantine period (Dr. Yasmine Amory)
16:30-17:30 Practice papyri of the Byzantine period
18:30 Informal dinner (optional, at your own expense)
Tuesday 4 February 2020
9:00-10:00 Majuscule and early minuscule bookhands (4th-9th centuries) (Dr. Rachele Ricceri)
10:00-11:00 Practice majuscule and early minuscule bookhands
11:00-12:00 The development of minuscule script in the 10th-12th centuries (Dr. Maria Tomadaki)
12:00-13:00 Lunch
13:00-14:00 Practice minuscule script of the 10th-12th centuries
14:00-15:00 Manuscripts and scholars of the Paleologan period (13th-15th centuries) (Prof. dr. Floris Bernard)
15:00-15:30 Coffee break
15:30-16:30 Practice manuscripts of the Paleologan period
Practical information
The study load is the equivalent of 2 ECTS (2×28 hours). Participants will be asked to read up on secondary literature in preparation for the seminar, see below. Extra material will be handed out during the course in order to continue to practice and improve your reading skills after the course.
Lunch (Tuesday) will be provided. Travel costs and/or accommodation are at your own expense.
Deadline registration: 15 January 2020
For registration and further questions contact Joanne Stolk (joanne.stolk@ugent.be)
Secondary literature
- L.D. Reynolds and N.G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars, Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature, Oxford 1991, esp. pp. 1-78.
- G. Cavallo, Greek and Latin Writing in the Papyri, in R.S. Bagnall (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology 2009
- R. Barbour, Greek Literary Hands: A.D. 400–1600, Oxford 1981.
- I. Pérez Martín, “Byzantine Books”, in A. Kaldellis and N. Siniossoglou (eds), The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium (Cambridge, 2018), 37-46
- N. Wilson, “Palaeography”, in E. Jeffreys et al. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies, Oxford 2008, 101-114
- H. Hunger, “Handschriftliche Überlieferung in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, Paläographie”, in H. G. Nesselrath (ed.), Einleitung in die griechische Philologie, Wiesbaden 1997, 17-44
Ilse De Vos, Meertaligheid in Griekse manuscripten
! UPDATE ! Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this lecture has been cancelled.
This lecture is organised by the Griekenlandcentrum, the Centre for Hellenic Studies at Ghent University, and will be given in Dutch.
Abstract
De titel van deze bijdrage is bedrieglijk eenvoudig. Want, wat is een manuscript eigenlijk? Wat is een Grieks manuscript? Elk manuscript dat Grieks bevat? Wat verstaan we dan onder meertalige manuscripten? Manuscripten die van meet af aan in meerdere talen opgesteld werden? Of ook eentalige manuscripten die doorheen de eeuwen anderstalige notities allerhande verzameld hebben? En wat met eentalige manuscripten waarin een totaal ander alfabet gebruikt wordt dan dat wat je doorgaans met die taal associeert? Grieks in niet-Griekse karakters bijvoorbeeld. Of omgekeerd natuurlijk. Aan de hand van een verrassende reeks prikkelende voorbeelden zullen we ons over al deze vragen buigen en – wie weet – sommige zelfs beantwoorden. Piep gerust al eens naar dit wereldberoemde manuscript waarmee we de avond zullen aftrappen, een 12de eeuws psalmboek in de British Library waarin Grieks, Latijn én Arabisch vredig naast elkaar staan. Don’t mention the B word!
Practical information
Date & time: Wednesday 18 March 2020, 8:00 pm
Place: Auditorium 1 Jan Broeckx (Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Gent)
The Quest for the Lost Epigram: Griekse boekepigrammen in middeleeuwse manuscripten
! UPDATE ! Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this event has been cancelled.
On 20 March 2020 the Greek Section at Ghent University organizes the online festival “Bust the myth! Research Festival for secondary schools”. The Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams will present the workshop “The Quest for the Lost Epigram: Griekse boekepigrammen in middeleeuwse manuscripten”.
Practical information
- Date and time: Friday 20 March 2020
- Language: Dutch
- More information: https://www.grieks.ugent.be/events/onderzoeksfestival-voor-scholen-doorprik-de-mythe/
Biblical Poetry: The Legacy of the Psalms in Late Antiquity and Byzantium
! UPDATE ! Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the conference has been cancelled.
The Psalms, in their Greek Septuagint translation, were a fundamental corpus of biblical poetry, and as such were continuously referred to in Christian literature. They played a key role in the daily life and in the development of religious sensitivity of late antique and Byzantine people. The production of Psalm-related literature, notably exegetic, was impressively widespread. The Psalms, however, influenced other genres of religious literature as well, and their poetical nature remained an important feature that later authors were well aware of.
This colloquium is organised within the framework of the projects David, our Orpheus. Reception, Rewritings and Adaptations of the Psalms in Byzantine Poetry (funded by the FWO – Flemish Research Foundation) and The Legacy of the Psalms in Byzantine Poetry: Book Epigrams and Metrical Paraphrases (funded by the FWO – Flemish Research Foundation and the FWF – Austrian Science Fund), which are being carried out at Ghent University, KU Leuven and the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
More information: https://www.psalms2020.ugent.be/.
GROWING CORPORA. Byzantine Book Epigrams and Online Text Collections
! UPDATE ! Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Growing Corpora conference in June has been cancelled.
Since 2010, the Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams team have been growing an online corpus of metrical paratexts, several of which were previously unpublished or unknown altogether, and made them freely available to the scholarly community.
A new version of our database (https://www.dbbe.ugent.be) was launched in June 2019. Exactly one year later, we are organising a two-day conference. Together with anyone interested in this particular genre of Byzantine poetry, we want to celebrate and reflect on what we have achieved so far and look ahead at what is – hopefully! – yet to come. Moreover, we want to stimulate communication and collaboration with other projects that are growing online corpora of texts.
For any further information, please visit our conference website (https://www.dbbe2020.ugent.be).
Andreas Rhoby, Verse and Image: The Kosmos of Byzantine Metrical Paratexts
On Thursday 11 February, Andreas Rhoby (Austrian Academy of Sciences) will inaugurate the first Speaking From the Margins lecture series. He will dedicate his presentation to the memory of Wolfram Hörandner, professor emeritus of Byzantine literature at the University of Vienna, who recently passed away.
Abstract
The production of verse in Byzantium was immense. What is left represents only the tip of the iceberg of the poetic production of Byzantine intellectuals. Writing verses (as opposed to writing prose) was not necessarily considered to be something special, as is the case in our modern conception of literature. In Byzantium, a considerable part of the literary production belongs to the genre of so-called paratexts, i.e. texts that accompany or refer to a main text. These paratexts, a huge amount of them composed in verse, occur in manuscripts (often in connection with images) but also as inscriptions. For example, verses accompanying portraits in fresco painting are also paratexts insofar as they accompany an image which represents the center of the composition.
In my presentation, I will discuss the interaction of images and accompanying verses in manuscripts, on fresco paintings and on other media. My lecture will reveal how carefully planned was the production and the layout of images with verses in manuscripts and other media, and how one medium influenced the other. The kosmos of Byzantine metrical paratexts is as wide and colorful as the kosmos (‘adornment’) of images and illuminations and their accompanying verses.
Practical information
Date & time: Thursday 11 February 2021, 4:00pm (UTC+1, CET)
No registration required. The lecture is freely accessible via Zoom: https://ugent-be.zoom.us/j/98880354185?pwd=YnErNHlCWkZxTk43eVlWY0JBNnpPUT09
- Meeting ID: 988 8035 4185
- Passcode: 2Mg6Uvdt
Julie Boeten, The Focus in and on Book Epigrams: A Pragmatic Investigation of Object Clitic Pronouns and the Topic-Focus Pair in Byzantine Book Epigrams
The second lecture in the online lecture series Speaking From the Margins. DBBE Online Lectures, Spring 2021 Series will be given by Julie Boeten (Ghent University).
After finishing a Master’s degree in Classical language and literature at Ghent University, Julie Boeten started her PhD at the same alma mater under the wings of the DBBE project in 2015. In 2016, she received her own FWO grant, but remained affiliated with the Database.
Abstract
The book epigrams in the Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams have formed the corpus for my doctoral research in the past couple of years. Indeed, a sub-database was even designed specifically for my purposes, which is linked to the larger DBBE database. In this sub-database I have tagged a number of features, one of which are the object clitic pronouns (OCPs). These are the pronouns in their clitic form, when they are in an object position, such as με, σοι or τοι. The reason why these OCPs are an interesting word group to tag, is because they are important signallers of information structure.
The tagging in the DBBE has yielded some interesting results concerning the distribution of OCPs in the Medieval Greek language of book epigrams. It is generally agreed upon that the unmarked, ‘normal’ position of the OCP in Medieval Greek is (immediately) following the verb. However, a large amount of OCPs in the DBBE are preverbal. What exactly is going here?
The so-called focus hypothesis suggests that there may a pragmatic explanation for this. Indeed, focalized information is usually attracted into a preverbal position, which may be the reason for this distribution of OCPs in the DBBE. In this paper, we will have a closer look at this and consider the possible ramifications for Medieval Greek word order in general.
Practical information
Date & time: Tuesday 2 March 2021, 4:00pm (UTC+1, CET)
No registration required. The lecture is freely accessible via Zoom: https://ugent-be.zoom.us/j/93997718555?pwd=MjM0MS9LSkJLY3N5V0M2Zmx2WEZBQT09
- Meeting ID: 939 9771 8555
- Passcode: P0uWgw8E