RICERCA ITALIANA     

The Hellenistic greek literature from authorship to audienceship:texts and contexts

Università degli Studi di Roma "Tor Vergata"

Abstract

The research project "The Hellenistic Greek literature from authorship to audienceship: texts and contexts" specifically focuses on a well circumscribed span of time in the century-long history of Greek literature: the Hellenistic period.
With literature we not only mean poetry, but the other kinds of literary genres as well, ranging from the philological-scholarly literature to the rhetorical and philosophical ones. What stood the main revolving point in the Hellenistic literature, compared to the Greek literature in the previous centuries, was the change in the relationship between the creating moment of any literary, philological, rhetorical or philosophical work - text - and the environment - context - which that work was both created in and meant for.
We aim at investigating the political, social and cultural contexts to which the authors – poets, philologists and scholars, rhetors and philosophers –, on one hand, and those their works were meant for and the audience, on the other, belonged. We will, thus, pay special attention to the places where most of the literary, rhetoric and philosophic authorship and audienceship would be found in the Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic period: courts and palaces, poetry circles, rhetoric and philosophic schools, libraries.
Since this research project means to look into the relationship between authorship and audienceship not only for the literary-poetical creations, but also for the philological-scholarly >>>

Principal Investigator

Roberto PRETAGOSTINI Università degli Studi di ROMA "Tor Vergata"

Research Objectives

This research project aims at analysing the Hellenistic literature and its various and varied aspects – from poetry to drama, from philology to rhetoric and philosophy – from a definite point of view: the relationship between authorship and audienceship. In other words said, we are intending to bring forth and publish any research results which may show and explain to which extent the authors – whether poets, philologists, rhetors or philosophers –would exert any influence on, and in turn be influenced by, the context they were working in and for.
At the end of this research project we plan to hold a congress, organized by the unit of the University of Rome "Tor Vergata". This will be the right arena and occasion for the research results gained by each unit to be expounded, by this drawing a general outline of the research work carried out in the two-year period 2005-2007. This outline itself might then serve as starting point to all those scholars who will want to deal with these same issues. Furthermore, this research project aims at bringing fort and issuing publications both of wider - e.g. commentated editions, commentaries, critical essays, monographs on specific authors or works -, and of more specialized range – e.g. papers and articles, about specific issues or aspects related to a single topic, to be published in the most renowned journals, inland and abroad. Still, in accomplishing the aim of this research program, we will not fail to compare the >>>

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

In recent years, the Hellenistic literature has aroused considerable interest among many scholars in Italy and abroad, although their research work is attested only to a certain extent within the reach of "bibliographical references".
This current research project takes start from issues and topics specifically related to the Hellenistic age, which have already been investigated during two previous co-financed research projects (COFIN 2001 and COFIN 2003). Thanks to those two projects, major congresses were possible to be held and noteworthy research results, already published or currently in press, were achieved. This research work brought forth an effective and impressive cooperation with some of the most distinguished scholars and researchers in the field of Hellenistic culture from abroad, among whom Richard Hunter, Peter Bing, Antonio Rengakos and Alan Cameron. This sound net of relations serves nowadays research as a ground for a wider and international reach.
Thus, the starting point for this current research project is mainly the huge amount of previously experiences gathered experiences and the actual results of the former and already accomplished researches. Some of these works are well worth mentioning: the two volumes collecting papers from two International congresses on the Hellenistic literature which were both held at the University of Rome "Tor Vergata" in 1997 (R. Pretagostini cur., La letteratura ellenistica, Roma 2000) e in 2003 (R >>>