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“The Trojan Wars and the Making of the Modern World: Classical Reception after Antiquity”

In the climactic moment of The Iliad, Hector perceives the inevitability of his death and, drawing his sword, makes one final charge at Achilles, that he might do “some great deed, that men to come shall know of it.” Some 3,0 00 years after the earliest accounts of his fatal charge, Homer – and Hector – would no doubt be amazed to learn that not only do the men to come still know of it, it has become one of the most widely depicted deeds in world literature, and the war of which it is a part has been depicted in more genres and media in more countries and languages than ever before. From antiquity to the present, in the Old World and the New, poets, historians, playwrights, painters and sculptors and, more recently, cinematographers, novelists and graphic artists have told and retold the foundational myth of the secular world, making it new for every generation. In fact, more accounts of the Trojan War are being produced now and in more different media than in any other period.

The aim of the conference is to bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners working in a variety of periods, places, languages and media to better understand the global tradition of representation and to demonstrate how, while each of these works draws from the preceding tradition, each work is also the unique product of its artistic, political, cultural and aesthetic context and the vision of its creator.

Though inventive and original papers on any aspect of Trojan War reception in theory or practice are welcome, those with a comparative element (i.e. comparing works in different media, languages, genres and periods) which speak to the interplay and allusiveness among works in the tradition of Trojan War representation, as well as those discussing less canonical and neglected versions, are particularly desirable. Possible paper topics include

• Homeric and non-Homeric accounts of the Trojan War and the tradition of Homeric criticism
• Medieval Trojan Wars
• Early Modern Trojan Wars (the Renaissance, Enlightenment)
• Modern and Postmodern Trojan Wars
• the interplay between visual and literary representations of the
Trojan War
• Trojan War reception inside and outside Europe
• The Trojan War in political discourse and/or the formation of national identity
• The Trojan War in the new media and pop culture (e.g. youtube, videogames, graphic novels)
• The Trojan War and the western canon
• The Trojan War in the classroom/pedagogical issues
• translation
• the Trojan War and the “mirror of princes” genre
• Trojan War novels
• Performance and the Trojan War (e.g. theater, opera and film)

The conference will take place at the Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University, from Thursday, June 13 to Sunday, June 16, 2013. 250-300 word abstracts should be sent to Adam Goldwyn at adam.goldwyn@lingfil.uu.se by December 1st, 2012.