Please note that this call is closed.
The Psalms, in their Greek Septuagint translation, were a fundamental corpus of biblical poetry, and as such were continuously referred to in Christian literature. They played a key role in the daily life and in the development of religious sensitivity of late antique and Byzantine people. The production of Psalm-related literature, notably exegetic, was impressively widespread. The Psalms, however, influenced other genres of religious literature as well, and their poetical nature remained an important feature that later authors were well aware of.
In preparation of a volume on the reception of the Psalms in poetry from Late Antiquity and Byzantium, we invite scholars of all levels of experience to present a paper at a colloquium on this subject.
Confirmed speakers are Andrew Faulkner, Antonia Giannouli, Christian Høgel and Maria Ypsilanti.
We welcome contributions on the following topics especially:
- the appreciation of the Psalter’s poetical nature in exegesis and in the biblical manuscript tradition (e.g. recognition, by patristic and Byzantine exegetes, of the presence or absence of poetical features);
- rhetorical aspects of the Psalms as highlighted in late antique and Byzantine treatises;
- the influence of the Psalms on Byzantine poetry (e.g. what was their role in the composition of eis heauton poems? How does self-expression in Christian poetry relate to the Psalms?);
- the reception of the Psalms in hymnographic poetry;
- the reception of the Psalter in specific genres of poetry, such as Byzantine catanyctic poetry;
- the metrical metaphrases by ps-Apollinaris and Manuel Philes;
- metrical paratexts on the Psalms.
These examples are not exclusive and papers on other related topics are welcome.
We invite proposals for 20-minute papers. Each paper will be followed by a reaction from a respondent, who will open the discussion with the audience. Contributors whose abstract is accepted will be asked to submit prior to the colloquium a rough draft of their full text. After the conference, they are expected to offer their re-worked paper for inclusion (upon acceptance after peer-review) in a volume on the reception of the Psalms in Byzantine poetry.
Please send a title and a short abstract (max. 300 words) of your paper to rachele.ricceri@ugent.be no later than May 31, 2019.
Accepted speakers will be notified by the end of June 2019.