(Re)Create. Towards a Theory of Heteronomous Texts

Conference programme

Thursday, 5 September 2024

1:00 PM Conference Office Opens

2:00 PM Welcome by the Organising Committee

2:30 PM Keynote. Rachel L. Love (Harvard University, USA): Historical Notes: Ancient History in the Commentarial Tradition

3:45 PM Coffee Break

4:15 PM Gregor Diez (University of Graz, Austria): The Compilation of the Polybian Parts in the Excerpta de Legationibus

5:00 PM TBA

6:00 PM Reception

7:00 PM Joint Dinner

Friday, 6 September 2024

9:00 AM Michael Berger (University of Vienna, Austria): Autonomy and Heteronomy of the Manuscript Copy. Some Considerations on Scribal Practices and the Relationship of Cod. Pal. germ. 341 and Cod. Bodm. 72

9:45 AM Mafalda Gomes (University of Porto, Portugal): von mannes minne: (Re)Creating Love-Shaped Autonomy in Medieval German literature

10:30 AM Coffee Break

11:00 AM Andreas Henn (University of Freiburg, Germany): Barlaam and Josaphat: From the Buddha Legend to Existential Christian Platonism

11:45 AM Olena Peleshenko (National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Ukraine): The Tale of Macarius of Rome and its Translations in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Ukrainian Manuscript Collections: Towards an Understanding of Christian Censorship in the Byzantine Empire and Rus'

12:30 PM Lunch Break

2:30 PM Caterina Carpinato (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy): Writing, Reading and Speaking Greek in 16th Century Venice: Confronting the Ancient World and the Ancestors?

3:15 PM Angelos Zaloumis (University of Patras, Greece): Gathering Flowers: How Two Overlooked 14th c. Byzantine florilegia Confirm the Authorship of the Dubious Adversus Cantacuzenum and Reveal the Direct Sources of the Patristic Quotations Found in Manuel Kalekas’ De essentia et operatione

4:00 PM Nina Vanhoutte (Ghent University, Belgium): To Cite or not to Cite: Heteronomy in Niketas of Herakleia’s Grammatical Poems

4:45 PM Coffee Break

5:15 PM Keynote. Stefano Valente (Universität Hamburg, Germany): nullam rem (lexicographicam) e nihilo: Greek-Byzantine Lexica Between Heteronomy and Autonomy

7:00 PM Joint Dinner

Saturday, 7 September 2024

10:00 AM Venue opens

10:15 AM Immanuel Musäus (University of Greifswald, Germany): Is Myth a Text? – Ancient Scholars’ Ways of Dealing with Myth

11:00 AM Reinhard G. Kratz (University of Göttingen, Germany): The Productive Transmission of the Hebrew Bible

11:45 AM Alicia Hein (University of Tübingen, Germany): A Single Figure out of Many Texts: Elijah as Malachi’s Messenger-Prophet-Priest

12:30 PM Lunch Break

2:30 PM Markus Kersten (University of Mainz, Germany): Sublime Smallness? Ausonius on Being Dependent

3:15 PM Jennifer Weintritt (Northwestern University, USA): Translating, Epitomizing, Networking: The Doloneia in Baebius Italicus’ Ilias Latina

4:00 PM Scott Di Giulio (Mississippi State University, USA): Recompilation and Practices of Ancient Literary Production: The Roman Miscellany as a Case Study in Heteronomy

4:45 PM Coffee Break

5:15 PM Keynote. Therese Fuhrer (University of München, Germany): Seneca’s Tragedies as a Staging of ‘Conscious Dependency’

6:30 PM Formal Closing

Call for Papers

(Re)Create. Towards a Theory of Heteronomous Texts

The creation of texts can take various forms. One seemingly obvious method is to copy an already existing text. The material evidence of this practice in Antiquity and the Middle Ages constitutes the foundation of our knowledge of ancient textual cultures. A partial copy can also be the basis for further work on the material: shortening or adding, expanding, rearranging, or re-collecting are only a few possible ways of dealing with pre-texts. Some texts enclose their pre-texts, as we can see for instance in medieval commentary literature. Some texts quote their pre-texts, some allude to them thematically. Some texts are devoted entirely to their pre-texts, others use them only incidentally and as part of a broader scheme. With such different methods of production also comes a variety of genres in which we can find evidence of them: commentaries, compendia, collections, translations, and encyclopaedias as well as re-narrations of historical and literary material are all examples of texts that rely on predecessors although they differ in many other ways.

We can identify the connecting phenomenon of these texts: they all acknowledge the norm set by another entity. We call this phenomenon heteronomy.

Heteronomous texts form the core of the research training group “Autonomy of Heteronomous Texts in Antiquity and the Middle Ages”. In case studies we investigate texts and traditions from the fields of Byzantine Studies, Greek and Roman History and Philology, Medieval German Studies, Philosophy, Syriac Studies, and Theology. A key aspect of our work is analysing the dependence between a text and its (purported) counterpart, namely the autonomy of creation. In particular, the creative relationship between adhering to a normative text and detaching oneself from it interests us. New and stand-alone works can be the product of conscious dependency.

While ‘literary autonomy’ has given rise to different theoretical approaches and case studies, ‘heteronomy’ has not yet been integrated into a fully formed theory. With our conference we aim to further this line of questioning: Which elements of a text are heteronomous and in what way? With which methods can we analyse these textual strategies? To what extent does this help us to understand the relationship between a text and its historical context? Are producers of heteronomous texts driven by a certain set of motivations?

We are open to papers that critically engage with our concept of heteronomy in relation to othertheories. For example, various theories of intertextuality are concerned with the particular connection between texts (Fowler 1997; May 2012). In medieval studies, the term wiedererzählen has been coined to describe different forms of remodelling a text (Worstbrock 1999). Allusion and citation have a rich history in philology and theology (Krause 2022), and aemulatio and imitatio refer to a distinctive aesthetic value of engaging with pre-texts (May 2012). Concerning the working methods, theories have been developed for excerpting, collecting or rearranging textual material (Dusil et al. 2017; Piccione 2003). Last but not least the term ‘autonomy’ itself has been applied but also contested in its use to describe works of literature (Porter 2012). How can we define ‘autonomy’ and ‘heteronomy’ to use them with benefit for our disciplines? Which other theories and concepts are related to the study of heteronomy? How can we distinguish or integrate the research of heteronomy into these established fields? As many others, heteronomous texts oftentimes cross genre boundaries as defined by research communities. How can the notion of heteronomous texts further our understanding of genre studies?

The outlined questions about motivations and strategies will be the thread of the conference. Whether proposals take a more theoretical or close-reading approach to this question, they should keep the highly specialised and interdisciplinary audience in mind.

We invite contributions from (but not limited to) the following fields: Theology and Biblical Studies, Latin and Middle Latin Studies, Greek and Byzantine Studies, Syriac Studies, Ancient and Medieval History and Philosophy, German Medieval Studies, and Roman Law. Preference will be given to proposals that focus on our areas of expertise: Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Both terms are understood in their broadest sense.

Each paper should last 20 minutes and will be followed by 20 minutes of discussion. We are looking forward to receiving proposals from scholars at all career stages, and we aim for parity in gender. The conference’s language will be English. Speakers will be reimbursed for hotel and travel costs. Please send your abstracts (max. 300 words) to: recreate-texts@uni-jena.de. The deadline for submissions is 22 March 2024.

Please do not hesitate to contact us (Nicolas Campagnoli under the aforementioned email) with any questions you might have.

Selected Bibliography

• Bracht, K., Harke, J. D., Perkams, M., & Vielberg, M. (Eds.). (2021). Heteronome Texte: Kommentierende und tradierende Literatur in Antike und Mittelalter. De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110733709
• Dusil, S., Schwedler, G., & Schwitter, R. (2017). Transformationen des Wissens zwischen Spätantike und Frühmittelalter: Zur Einführung. In S. Dusil, G. Schwedler, & R. Schwitter (Eds.), Exzerpieren – Kompilieren – Tradieren (pp. 1–22). De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110516340-001
• Fowler, D. (1997). On the Shoulders of Giants: Intertextuality and Classical Studies. Materiali e Discussioni per l’analisi Dei Testi Classici, 39, 13–34. https://doi.org/10.2307/40236104
• Krause, J. J. (2022). Citations, Allusions, and Marking Them in the Hebrew Bible: A Theoretical Introduction with Some Examples. Biblical Interpretation, 31(4), 440–456. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685152-20221700
• May, M. (2012). Intertextualität. In E. Zemanek & A. Nebrig (Eds.), Komparatistik (pp. 99–112).
• Piccione, R. M. (2003). Sammeln, Neuordnen, Neues Schaffen: eine Perspektive der Forschung. In R. M. Piccione & M. Perkams (Eds.), Selecta colligere 1 (p. VIIff.). Ed. dell’Orso.
• Porter, J. I. (2010). Why Art Has Never Been Autonomous. Arethusa, 43(2), 165–180. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44578324
• Worstbrock, F. J. (1999). Wiedererzählen und Übersetzen. In W.Haug (Ed.), Mittelalter und frühe Neuzeit (pp. 128–142). De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110949407.128