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SUMMARY:Creative Copies: Eudocia's 'Homerocentones' and the Scribe as Auth
 or in Christian Late Antiquity - Francesca Middleton
DTSTART:20131121T171500Z
DTEND:20131121T183000Z
UID:TALK48990@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Benjamin Folit-Weinberg
DESCRIPTION: As a technique which allows poetic composition through the pa
 tchwork of lines and half-lines taken from someone else's poetry (typicall
 y Homer in Greek and Virgil in Latin)\, cento has traditionally been derid
 ed as a derivative and uncreative practice\, emblematic of literary declin
 e in Late Antiquity. Naturally\, however\, this position has been challeng
 ed in recent years and critical movements based in reception and reader-re
 sponse have lent the form more sympathetic analysis.  Cento's process of v
 erse selection and juxtaposition is now commonly recognised as one which\,
  as it produces a different (if generally familiar) narrative\, also twist
 s the original sense of those verses into an ironic subtext.  Indeed\, it 
 is seen to give something to its words as much as it depends upon earlier 
 poetic practice.\n \nBut what does it mean to call this practice creative?
   What makes this creativity possible?  In this paper I look at one specif
 ic cento against the background of early Christianity and consider the soc
 ial position of both mediatory and originary forms of writing.  I will arg
 ue not only that the figure of the scribe (and therefore the figure of the
  centonist) became an important creative agent during this period\, but al
 so that intermediary forms of literature such as cento provided more scope
  for literary creativity than those wherein an author was seen to produce 
 work from scratch.
LOCATION:Classics Faculty\, Room G.21
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