Date/Time
Date(s) - 15 Oct 2013
5:30 PM - 6:45 PM
Location
Columbia University Faculty House
Category(ies) No Categories
The second meeting of the University Seminar on Medieval Studies take place on Tuesday, October 15, from 5:30-7:00pm in Room 2 of Faculty House (Columbia University).
Marilynn Desmond, of Binghamton University, will speak on “Trojan Temporality and the Materiality of History.”
The matter of Troy in the Latin West sustains a vision of the city of Troy as ever present yet always already destroyed: a city that exists outside of time. In medieval historiography, the Fall of Troy results in the Trojan diaspora and the settlement of Europe by Trojan refugees who flee the burning city; the fall of Troy consequently makes the narrative of European history possible. This vision of Trojan ancestry as a myth of origins is often invoked to express a vision of European futurity. This paper will explore how the translatio of the matter of Troy generated its own temporality.
In the absence of the Homeric epics, the matter of Troy was transmitted to the medieval West by the Latin prose texts attributed to Dares and Dictys. These texts represent themselves as the translatio of ancient Greek textual traditions and simultaneously as the material transmission of these traditions from papyrus to parchment. The vernacular itinerary of the Latin texts of Dares and Dictys create a distinct Trojan temporality. In the twelfth-century Roman de Troie, Benoît de Sainte-Maure insists that the materiality of translation practices allows the reader to participate directly in the Trojan War, while two centuries later, the visual program in a manuscript of Raoul de Presles’ translation of Augustine’s de civitate dei encapsulates the atemporality of Troy as transmitted by Dares.
The talk will be followed by dinner at Faculty House. All those who wish to dine with the speaker after the talk must make reservations by contacting the rapporteur of the seminar, Jeffrey Wayno, either by phone or by email no later than one week before the talk. Phone: (607) 342-5737. Email: [email protected]. Dinner is a fixed buffet menu, which costs $25 per person. Payment can be made by checks made out to “Columbia University.”