Telling Tales Out of School: Latin education and European Literary Production
Ghent University, 14-16th Sept. 2017
The international and cooperative research group RELICS studies historical literatures and the dynamics that shape a common, European literary identity. We see this literary identity as particularly negotiated through languages that reached a cosmopolitan status due to fixed schooling systems (Latin, Greek and Arabic), and in their interaction with vernacular literatures. From a diachronic perspective, we aim to seek unity within the ever more diverse, literary Europe, from the first to the eighteenth century, i.e. from the beginning of (institutionally organized) education in the cosmopolitan language to the rise of more national oriented education.
Within this context, relics are elements from a literary past, as preserved in the canons, to which different periods and literatures ascribed varying values and interpretations. The metaphor, hereby, reflects the researchers’ aim to transgress national boundaries and search for a European literary identity.
The ‘Telling Tales Out of School’-conference will not only be the launching event of the research group, it will also be a great occasion for international researchers to get to know and even join RELICS.
The main focus of this conference will be the dynamic interaction between European literary production and Latin education as its undercurrent. At the two extremes, this relation can, on the one hand, be defined as one in which education only functioned as a transmitter of knowledge and literary attitudes; on the other hand, education can also be seen as a full part of the intellectual environment in which literary techniques, values and texts were not only transferred, but also evaluated and (re-)created. From the latter perspective, Latin literature and education were involved in a constant negotiation about (changing) aesthetic, social and historical elements. This conference seeks to cover the entire Latinitas from the institutionalization of Latin education, as embodied by Quintilian, to the end of Latin as a primary language of schooling in modern times.
This conference is organized in collaboration with Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO), the Ghent Institute for Classical Studies (GICS), the Henri Pirenne Institute for Medieval Studies, and the Group for Early Modern Studies (GEMS).
Information and registration at: http://www.tellingtalesoutofschool.ugent.be/