Narrating Emotions in Late Latin Literature

The online seminar series Narrating Emotions in Late Latin Literature, which is planned to take place between April and June 2025, is part of the PRIN 2022 project “PATHOS: PATHS OF THE SOUL. AN ATLAS OF ANCIENT EMOTIONS” («Sapienza» University of Rome, University of Messina) and aims to delve deeper into the relationship between emotions and diegesis in late Latin literary texts. The goal is to fill a gap in the history of scholarship: while considerable attention has been devoted to this aspect in Catullus' poem 64 (FERNANDELLI 2012; LAX 2020), Augustan and Flavian epic poetry (MCCUTCHEON 2012; AGRI 2022; HARRISON 2022), Senecan drama (SCHIESARO 2003; BATTISTELLA 2018), and imperial historiography (Livy: VAN GILS - KROON 2022; Curtius Rufus: BETTENWORTH 2020), for later works we only have the studies of W. Evenepoel on humor and fear in Paulinus of Nola's Natalicia 6 and 8 (edited by the scholar in 1995 and 1999), B. Sidwell's monograph on anger in Ammianus Marcellinus (2013), and J. Clarke's contribution on female pain in Prudentius' Peristephanon (2021); equally illustrative is the presence of only one essay on Latin literature (GERBRANDY 2022, on the emotional sphere of Ceres in Claudian's De Raptu Proserpinae) in the section dedicated to Late Antiquity and Beyond in the recent miscellany on Emotions and Narrative in Ancient Literature and Beyond (eds. M. DE BAKKER - B. VAN DEN BERG - J. KLOOSTER, Leiden-Boston 2022, 665-742).

Scholars interested in participating (PhD students, post-doctoral researchers, early career researchers) are invited to submit proposals on late Latin literary texts, with a wholly or partly narrative facies, and to develop lines of inquiry such as:

- Characterization of the emotional sphere: in what types of texts can we find the presence of emotions? Which emotions predominate in narrative discourse? Does the representation of emotions reveal an underlying philosophical substrate and/or the influence of the new Christian sensibility?
- Analysis of contexts: in response to which specific situational contexts do the represented emotions emerge? How does the representation of the emotional sphere differ in the face of peculiar historical events of the time, religious ideals and events, or the manifestation of the Christian supernatural (e.g., in miracle stories)?
- Emotions and topoi: does the treatment of emotions in late Latin diegesis reveal the recovery and/or renewal of certain topoi? What kind of imagery does this derive from?
- The emotional sphere of the narrator and the recipient: how is the narrator's emotional involvement in the subject matter revealed? Does the choice of a particular narrative perspective (homodiegetic; heterodiegetic) and focalization (zero; internal; external) influence the way emotions are represented within a story and their perception by the reader?
- Relationship between the emotional sphere and narrative strategies: to what extent do emotions affect the assumptions and developments of plots? Is it possible to assess their impact on the diegetic structure through alterations of time (analepsis/prolepsis) and the rhythm (concentration/dilation) of the narrative?
- Connections between emotions and chronotopic data: how do authors manipulate the spatial and temporal coordinates of the narrative in response to the emergence of a particular emotional state?

Each meeting of the cycle will include one or more presentations moderated by a discussant selected by the organizers; each presentation will last 30 minutes; papers in Italian or English will be accepted. To participate, please send an abstract, in Italian or English, of max. 300 words (bibliography excluded), accompanied by a brief curriculum vitae with name and affiliation to ignazio.lax[at]unime.it by January 15, 2025. The outcome of the selection will be communicated by the end of January 2025.

Lieu de la manifestation : Online
Organisation : Prof. Marco Onorato, Dott. Ignazio Lax (University of Messina)
Contact : ignazio.lax[at]unime.it