This workshop explores the various appearances and meanings of water in pre-modern literary cultures. What role did the geography of waterways play in the transregional movement of authors, texts, styles, and poetics? What commonalities and differences can we identify across pre-modern literary canons, including those in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and other vernaculars? How does water function as a literary motif and/or device in various traditions? Which (metaphorical) meanings are attached to it? And what light can our understanding of pre-modern human-nature relationships shine on modern-day ecological concerns? The aim of this workshop is to explore these questions through a variety of disciplinary, literary and linguistic contexts and approaches. In doing so, it seeks to build on a growing body of scholarship that turns the critical lens onto water.
This workshop explores the various appearances and meanings of water in pre-modern literary cultures. What role did the geography of waterways play in the transregional movement of authors, texts, styles, and poetics? What commonalities and differences can we identify across pre-modern literary canons, including those in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and other vernaculars? How does water function as a literary motif and/or device in various traditions? Which (metaphorical) meanings are attached to it? And what light can our understanding of pre-modern human-nature relationships shine on modern-day ecological concerns? The aim of this workshop is to explore these questions through a variety of disciplinary, literary and linguistic contexts and approaches. In doing so, it seeks to build on a growing body of scholarship that turns the critical lens onto water.
The workshop will be held in Ghent (Belgium) on 4 and 5 April 2024.
SCHEDULE DAY 1:
09:30: Welcome and coffee
10:00: Introduction to the workshop:
Jeroen de Gussem (Ghent University) and Klazina Staat (VU Amsterdam)
SESSION 1: Materialities of Water Writing (moderated by Robert Gallagher)
10:30-11:00: Stewart Mottram (University of Hull):
Writ on Water: Literatures of Flooding in the Pre-Modern Humber Wetlands
11:00-11:30: Jens de Rijbel (Ghent University):
The Role of Water in Bruges’ perception in the Middle Dutch Gruuthuuse Manuscript
11:30-12:00: Hetta Howes (City University of London): “The Water Was Depe, I Dorst not Wade”: Division and Devotion in Medieval Literature
12:00: General Discussion
12:30 Lunch
SESSION 2: Aquatic Poetics (Moderated by Dinah Wouters)
13:30-14:00: James Louis Smith (University College Cork): Hydro-Social Flows: Deep Mapping and Pre-Modern Blue Humanities (CANCELLED)
14:00-14:30: Frank van den Boom (Leiden University): Rudis Amphitrite: Hydropoetical Narrativity in Catullus 64
14:30-15:15: General discussion
15:15-15:45: Coffee break
SESSION 3: Symbolic Waters (Moderated by Klazina Staat)
15:45-16:15: Lorenzo Paveggio (University of Padua): Early Medieval Waterways, Justice and Greed
16:15-16:45: Ipek Hüner (Boğaziçi University Istanbul): Water and its Wonders in Ottoman Mirabilia
16:45-17:15: Silvio Lorenzo Ruberto (Utrecht University & Leiden University): The Role of Rivers in the Northern Song Southward Migration in Song Poetry
17:15-17:45: General discussion
17:45: Boat tour with Historical Tour Guide
19:00 Dinner for workshop participants
SCHEDULE DAY 2
KEYNOTE LECTURE: Albrecht Classen
9:00-10:30: Keynote lecture by Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona): Bodies of Water as Epistemological Challenges in Medieval and Early Modern European Literatures
10:30-10:45: General discussion
10:45-11:15: Coffee break
SESSION 4: Making Knowledge through Water (Moderated by Jeroen De Gussem)
11:15-11:45: Navaneeth Krishnan S
(Jawaharlal Nehru University): The Indian Ocean and its Fabled Sea Monsters in Pre-Modern European Visual Culture
11:45-12:15: Ovanes Akopyan (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice): Nogarola on the Nile: Current science and fluent Latin (IN ABSENTIA)
12:15-12:45: Luisa Ostacchini (University of Oxford): ‘Mare turbabatur’: Seawulf’s Sea Voyages as Imagined Crusade
12:45-13:00: General discussion
13:00: Lunch
SESSION 5: Roundtable
15:00: CLOSE
LOCATIONS
Conference Venue: Kapittelzaal Sint-Pietersabdij, Sint-Pietersplein 9, 9000, Ghent Hotel:
Ibis Gent Centrum Opera, Nederkouter 24, 9000, Ghent
ORGANIZERS
d.wouters@uu.nl (Dinah Wouters)
jedgusse.DeGussem@UGent.be (Jeroen De Gussem)
k.staat@vu.nl (Klazina Staat)
r.d.gallagher@kent.ac.uk (Robert Gallagher)
