Call for Papers for the special issue of the international periodical «Costellazioni»

“Dalle sacre ossa degli Elleni” – La Rivoluzione greca, due secoli dopo

General Editor: Filippomaria Pontani, Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, Univ. di Venezia “Ca’ Foscari”

Filippomaria Pontani is Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Venice “Ca’ Foscari”. He is primarily concerned with the manuscript transmission of ancient and Byzantine texts, with the exegetical tradition on Homer (he is currently editing the ancient and medieval scholia to Homer’s Odyssey), with the history of grammar, rhetoric and allegory, with the interpretations of various Greek and Latin texts (from Simonides to Callimachus, from Pindar to Virgil), with scholars of the Byzantine and humanistic age (from Eustathius to Politian), and with modern Greek poetry and literature (from Roidis to Karyotakis, from Kazantzakis to Vagenas).

Abstracts (max. 450 words) are invited for a monographic issue of the international periodical «Costellazioni» (https://www.rivistacostellazioni.org/) due to appear in 2021, on the second centenary of the Greek Revolution.

In Western Greece, between Aetolia and Acarnania, we find a privileged observation point for the analysis of our continent’s recent fate: I mean the itinerary leading from Lepanto (present-day Nafpaktos) to the historical city of Messolongi, from the statue of Miguel de Cervantes (who fought in the iconic battle against the infidels of 1571), to the huge statue of Lord Byron in oriental attire rising on the solitary edge of the Mesolongi lagoon, down to the many statues and monuments of English, Russian, French, German generals and soldiers in the nearby Garden of Heroes.

The struggle for Greek independence, officially initiated in Patra (on the other side of the Corinth Canal) in 1821, is often considered today as the highlight of European Romanticism, as one of the various emergences of the autonomistic thrust of its age: however, it was also the incunable of a wider process of nation-building that was to affect over the subsequent decades Belgium, Italy, Germany – due to this very primacy, as well as because of the peculiar merit of having physically brought together in the same place revolutionaries from so many different countries, and of course due to the outstanding symbolic capital left on the Aegean shores by centuries of Hellenic civilisation, this historical event is well worth being commemorated and rethought, two centuries afterwards.

The tribute paid by “Costellazioni” would not wish to carry (at least, not only) an erudite character: in a moment of distress, or metamorphosis, of the nation-state as we have been accustomed to know it, it might prove worthwhile to consider which elements of reflection the Epanastasi might offer to the European self-consciousness.

In this frame, contributions are invited on:

– the philosophical background (particularly as far as the contributions of the diaspora Greeks to the international Enlightement is concerned: from Paris to Naples to Bucharest and beyond)

– the more strictly political orientation (also in comparison with other national movements, and with the example of other European States)

– the historical and cultural dimension (the weight of Classical heritage, in terms of values and identity construction, both in the definition of the new Greek state and in the definition of various strands of European Philhellenism)

– the consequences in the field of literary and language (the controversial standardisation of a linguistic norm recognised by all social and ethnic components, and the renewal of a system of literary genres that could span from epic to popular songs, from lyric to diaries etc.)

– the religious implications (the return of the Christian faith on the ipsissima loca of Paul’s preaching, the confrontation with the Turkish giant, and particularly the slow re-appropriation of a Byzantine past too often neglected or denied).

From Velasti to Moustoxydis, from Byron to Carducci, from Solomos to Puaux, not all the characters who played a role in this international event are well-known today: any inquiry carried out on them and their significance will also inquire on aspects of European history that do not belong to one nation alone (let alone to its more nationalistic fringes), but should be rediscovered as a shared heritage of thought, art, and freedom.

Abstracts should be sent before June 30th, 2019, to the following address

f.pontani@unive.it

They will be evaluated and selected by the General Editor.

Articles should not be longer than 40.000 characters. In compliance with the Anvur policy, the articles will be then subjected to a double-blind peer-review process.

The languages are Italian, English, French, German, Spanish, and Modern Greek.

The stylesheet can be found here: https://www.rivistacostellazioni.org/norme-redazionali

Deadlines:

30.6.2019: deadline for abstracts

15.7.2019: indication to authors of acceptance or refusal

31.1.2020: deadline for complete articles, edited according to the periodical’s stylesheet



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