Ad mea tempora: Ovid in Ovidian Times (Graduate Colloquium) - March 9, 2013 - Abstracts due January 1, 2013

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It is by now a critical commonplace to observe that the last 30 years have seen a dramatic reversal in Ovid's critical fortunes. From a maligned harbinger of Silver Latin, Ovid has moved to the centre of Latin literary criticism and classical reception studies. This critical reappraisal can, of course, be understood as a reversion to a periodic historical norm, with Ovid returning to the high esteem in which he was held for much of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. At the same time, the recent Ovidian revival seems to follow, almost inevitably, from contemporary cultural conditions: Ovid's irony and wit, the kaleidoscopically intertextual texture of his poetry. his fascination with change, and his continual juxtapositions of sex and politics are all highly congenial to the interests and aesthetics of modern and postmodern literary and intellectual culture. The turn of the twenty-first century, then, has not only been a good moment for Ovid, but also a very Ovidian moment.

But what does it mean to describe a period, genre or work as Ovidian? This one-day graduate colloquium – a pendant to the Warburg Institute and Institute for Classical Study's The Afterlife of Ovid (http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/events/colloquia/afterlife-of-ovid/)– aims to bring together graduate students working on Ovid and his reception to explore and discuss the nature and boundaries of the Ovidian. Do different readers of Ovid invariably create their own versions of the poet, or can the Ovidian be understood as a transhistorical aesthetic category? Do literary and critical contexts in which Ovid holds a prominent position – including, but not limited to, the present moment, late 16th century England, and the latter half of the Augustan principate – share distinguishing cultural and aesthetic conditions? What are the relations between the Ovidian, the Augustan, the Classical?

We welcome submissions from graduate students working on the afterlife of Ovid in all periods and in all media. Papers that seek to understand the Ovidian inheritance in terms broader than those supposed by source and intertextual criticism, as well as theoretical considerations of Ovidianism and reception studies, are also very welcome. Please submit a 300-350 word abstract for a 20 minute presentation to admeatempora@gmail.com by January 1st. Please include your abstract as an attachment, with the title as the file name, but without your name anywhere on the document or in the title. And please include the title of your work in the body or subject of your email. Please do be in touch if you have any questions.