Date/Time
Date(s) - 24 Sep 2015
7:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Location
Columbia University Faculty House
Category(ies) No Categories
Katharina Volk (Columbia)
“Varro and the Disorder of Things”
Faculty House (please check the signs in the lobby for precise location)
Abstract:
“The late Republican polymath Marcus Terentius Varro wrote dozens of books, on topics including Roman history, religious institutions, civil law, philosophy, the Latin language, Plautine comedy, maritime geography, libraries, and agriculture—not to mention his Menippean satires and other poetic works. Giving this encyclopedic range, it very much looks as though Varro had the ambition to codify all available knowledge, expounding in his writing the order of things. In this paper, I examine Varro’s famous—some would say, notorious—attempts to systematize his manifold materials through the positing of orderly structures. As will become clear, such an exploration of Varronian order quickly leads to the discovery of Varronian disorder as well. My purpose is to investigate the often surprising ways in which rigorous schematization exists side by side with Varro’s apparent acknowledgment that his subject matter resists his attempts at imposing order, and to propose an explanation for this aspect of the scholar’s intellectual modus operandi.”
The evening will begin with drinks at 5:45 PM at the Ivy Lounge and Coffee Bar on the ground floor of Faculty House:http://facultyhouse.columbia.edu. Dinner will follow at 6:15 PM on the second floor of the same building. Please e-mail our rapporteur, Anna Conser, at [email protected] by noon on Monday, September 19th, in order to make a dinner reservation.
Prof. Volk’s lecture will begin promptly at 7:30 PM.