classical studies

How does medieval war resonate beyond the battlefield? This roundtable session invites papers that consider the relationship between medieval literature and wartime. War punctuates our understanding of the Middle Ages, providing us with frameworks for comprehending and interpreting the events of history, and the corpus of literature created in response to these conditions is equally broad. In its most literal sense, wartime literature is the narration or memorialization of events on the battlefield, from the Battle of Maldon to the work of Jordan Fantosme and the poetry attributed to Laurence Minot. Wartime, however, is less a temporal or veridical marker than a loaded conceptual term. What counts as wartime? When does it begin and end?

Recent critical focus on media and technology maps efforts to create a dynamic classroom that at its best enriches the teaching and learning at the university. But the long-standing interest in media as a means to reach students and enhance delivery also points to an absence in current scholarship, which has not been attentive to that same media as content in the humanities classroom.

In today’s mass media landscape, reports of domestic tragedies, inexplicable violence, and familial collapse have become staples of the 24-hour news cycle. Meanwhile, television series like Game of Thrones (Il Trono di Spade) and soap operas like The Bold and the Beautiful (Beautiful) sensationalize transgressions like parricide, incest, and tyrannical impulses to massive global success.

Free Will, defined by Dante's Virgilio as the noble power to guide and constrain the soul's natural inclination and desires (Purg 18.73),  holds a place of central concern in the Commedia. Elaborating on Marco Lombardo's discourse, the roman poet asserts that it is Free Will that accounts for the justice in feeling joy for doing good and misery for doing ill. While offering a general outline of the fundamental importance of Free Will in the ethical and moral rationale for the fate of departed souls, the pilgrim's first guide promises that Beatrice will provide clarity on this and other topics of particular complexity beyond the purview of his Classical pagan understanding.

1818-2018 – the silent revolution: of fears, folly & the female

Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon

5-6 November 2018

In 2018 we celebrate events which took place two hundred years ago: the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the birth of Emily Brontë. While the two events are markedly different, as the former is a tangible work of art and the latter more of a promise of what was to come, both have contributed to challenge and change the conceptions and perceptions of the time, thus performing a silent, subtle revolution in the world of letters.