15 October 2016
ETT workshop 1 – Defining and Theorising Emotions
University of Edinburgh
Overview
During the first workshop we shall focus on issues of exegesis and translation. We are interested in three types of exegesis pertaining to representations of emotions or to emotive discourse, namely literary, biblical and philosophical. We are interested not only in how ancient and medieval authors speak and conceptualize emotion, but also in the intertextual dialogue on affectivity or how texts engage with other texts about emotions (e.g., Byzantine scholia elucidating instances of affectivity in ancient texts).
Focusing on biblical exegesis and translations will help us approach the change in the vocabulary of emotions and the creation of a new emotional paradigm in the eastern Roman empire following the spread of Christianity. We encourage speakers to look for continuities, discontinuities and marks of reception, so as to elucidate ancient emotions through a study of their Byzantine counterparts and vice versa. Importantly, while we are interested in emotive vocabulary and its development, emotions need not be lexically present in the text, thus participants might benefit from looking at situations, scenes, narratives and scripts portraying or enacting affectivity, even if they are not labelled as such in the narrative.
Additional questions participants might find helpful include the following: are certain emotions more likely to appear in a certain type of text? Are specific genres associated with specific emotions? What is the emotive vocabulary used? How are emotions gendered?
Participants
Prof. Douglas L. Cairns (Edinburgh), Prof. Niels Gaul (Edinburgh), Prof. Martin Hinterberger (Cypus), Dr Inna Kupreeva (Edinburgh), Dr Divna Manolova (Edinburgh), Prof. Margaret Mullett (Belfast), Dr Ioannis Papadogiannakis (KCL), Dr Aglae Pizzone (SDU), Prof. Filippomaria Pontani (Venezia), Prof. Lioba Theis (Wien), Prof. Petra von Gemünden (Augsburg), Dr Sophia Xenophontos (Glasgow), Dr Matteo Zaccarini (Edinburgh).
Programme
10.00 – 10.10: welcome by Douglas Cairns and Aglae Pizzone
10.10 – 11.00 Douglas Cairns
11.00 – 11.50: Aglae Pizzone
11.50 – 12.00: coffee break
12.00 – 12.50: Inna Kupreeva
12.50 – 13.40: Sophia Xenophontos
13.40 – 14.30: lunch break
14.30 – 15.20: Ioannis Papadogiannakis
15.20 – 16.10: Petra von Gemünden
16.10 – 16.20: coffee break
16.20 – 17.10: Filippomaria Pontani
17.10 – 18.00: concluding discussion