Ovid Across Europe: Vernacular Translations of the Metamorphoses in the Middle Ages & Renaissance

This conference aims to bring together scholars working on medieval and early modern translations of the Metamorphoses in Europe in order to shed light on the various ways in which Ovid’s poem was re-purposed and received, as well as to trace connections between different literary traditions.

Areas of research might include:

● Text, language, and style of the Metamorphoses’ vernacular translations;
● The physical structure and presentation of the translations (support material, script or type, size, layout and decorations, marginalia) and their relationship with the Latin editions;
● The handwritten tradition and the oral tradition of the vernacular Metamorphoses;
● From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, from manuscript to printed book: disruption, or continuity?
● Allegories and commentaries attached to Ovid’s poem and their influence on the Metamorphoses’ translations;
● Vernacular Metamorphoses and national cultures: the transformations of Ovid’s poem in the language and style of the receiving culture and the role of vernacularization for the consolidation of a cultural identity.
● The changing worlds of the vernacular Metamorphoses: evolution and re-purposing of this text from the court, to the school, the street, the Academy, and the printing shop.

Key-note Speakers

-Genevieve Lively, Bristol University, UK (George Sandy’s Translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses)
-John Tholen, PhD candidate, Utrecht University (Ovid in the Early Modern Netherlands
-Elisa Guadagnini, CNR (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche), (The Italian Metamorphoses in the Middle Ages)

Please send an abstract (roughly 500 words) and a short curriculum by 30 March 2017 to the organizers:
Marta Balzi (m.balzi@bristol.ac.uk)
Gemma Pellissa Prades (gemmapellisa@gmail.com)