The conference explores the (early) history of literary histories of Classical Greek
literature, across different periods and geographical locations.
Irene de Jong starts the conference off by reflecting on the importance of (Greek)
literary history as an object of scholarly research. The rest of Panel 1 focuses on
Greek literary history in antiquity itself: James Porter on the Cynics as a beginning
without a known beginning and Stavros Tsitsiridis on the absence of such literary
history in ancient Greece; Roberto Nicolai on the ancient Greek versus Roman
literary historical contribution.
Following a loose chronological order, in Panel 2 Casper de Jonge explores how
Dionysius of Halicarnassus produced Greek literary history for an Augustan Roman
audience, while Carlotta Santini presents on its evolution through Friedrich Nietzche.
Also along the lines of German reception, in Panel 3 Margalit Finkelberg and
Constanze Güthenke consider 19 th -century Germany’s literary-historical output
through the lens of a historical metanarrative and the first German literary histories
respectively.
Subsequent panels enter more contemporary territory and are geographically
structured. In Panel 4, Richard Hunter looks back on the forty-year-old Cambridge
History of Classical Literature, while Ioanna Karamanou and Ioannis Konstantakos
concentrate on modern Greek outputs, the former on the agenda of the first literary
histories produced in the modern Greek state and the latter on their 20 th -century
counterparts.
Panel 5 divides its interest between Italy and France: Greek literary histories issued
in Italy are studied by Carlo Franco (with an emphasis on the 19 th century) and
Maurizio Sonnino (construing Gennaro Perrotta’s work as a balance of opposites);
their French-produced equivalents are the object of Laurent Pernot’s talk.
Two ethnic traditions as producers of Greek literary histories dominate Panel 6 as
well: the beginnings of Russian outputs are traced by Judith Kalb and 19 th -century
Hispanic textbooks (from Braulio Foz to Otfried Müller) by Francisco García-Jurado.
Lastly, Panel 7 is situated in the Slavic world. Poland is the object of Gościwit
Malinowski (specifically the earliest such work conducted in the country) and Maciej
Junkiert (relevant monographs by Groddeck, Węclewski, Sinko). Olesia Lazer-Pankiv
and Oleksandr Levko end the conference with a presentation on the trends of Greek
literary histories issued in 19 th – and 20 th -century Ukr