2nd Trends in Classics International Conference
Department of Classics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Centre for the Greek Language
2nd Trends in Classics International Conference
LANGUAGE – TEXT – LITERATURE
Archetypes, Concepts, and Contents of Ancient Scholarship and Grammar
Thessaloniki, December 5-7, 2008
Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki
Language as a system and the realization of linguistic content in textual form, and more precisely in literature, constitute the core of ancient Scholarship since its foundation as a distinct discipline in the Hellenistic era. The parameters Language – Text – Literature in their function as immediate components of the ancient grammatike techne, either in their initial conception as a whole or as individual parts, form the thematic spectrum of the conference.
The conference focuses on the disciplinary profile and the dynamics of ancient Greek Scholarship, the grammatical theory included, and aims at investigating its concepts and contents from a methodological, ideological, epistemological as well as cultural perspective. The relevant chronological frame, starting from the 3rd century BC until the first centuries AD, coincides with the autonomy of the discipline which soon reached its peak. Despite this chronological limitation, the conference theme cannot ignore the historical perspective of ancient Scholarship and Grammar, in the sense of continuity or discontinuity, and its interdisciplinary character. Similarly, its branches in terms of schools and interpretative traditions are also be taken into consideration along with the further development of the philosophy of language and literary criticism. Finally, the way the Greek concepts were perceived by the Romans in their attempt to establish the ars grammatica is being addressed as well, although from a narrower point of view.
The conference includes two main sections: Scholarship and Grammatical Theory. An attempt to show how these two fields correlate and interact is highly desirable. Apart from issues such as the identity and the tasks of the grammatikoi, the role of the addressee, the didactic aspect as well as the problems relating to the matter of technical literature, the following topics are also particularly relevant to the philological context: reflexion on poetics, literary genres and literary criticism, models of interpretation, and methodological problems regarding text editing. In the area of linguistic theory, the emphasis is on the issue of language correctness – in relation to literary interpretation but also independently of the literary context – and on the pairs: ‘The Language of literature vs. Actual language use’ and ‘Language change and linguistic norm’.