Nieuwe literatuur uit het Oudgrieks: contexten, doelgroepen, nalatenschap

The international conference New Ancient Greek Literature: Contexts, Audiences, Legacies, organised by the Hellas Belgica project (KU Leuven), brings together scholars from across Europe and beyond to explore the vibrant yet still understudied phenomenon of New Ancient Greek (NAG) or Humanist Greek literature. Spanning the Renaissance to the modern period, this corpus represents sustained efforts to revive, adapt, and reinvent Ancient Greek as a living literary language in post-classical contexts.
Rather than approaching New Ancient Greek merely as a philological curiosity or an imitation of classical models, the conference foregrounds it as a dynamic cultural practice: one shaped by specific historical settings, intellectual agendas, educational frameworks, confessional landscapes, and social networks. Contributions investigate how authors mobilised Ancient Greek to address particular audiences, negotiate authority and learning, perform identity, and engage with classical, Byzantine, and contemporary traditions.
The programme reflects the thematic strands outlined in the call for papers, with particular emphasis on authorial self-fashioning, audience and performance, the Byzantine legacy in post-classical Greek writing, and the afterlives of ancient genres, especially epic, but also drama, epistolography, and oratory. Papers examine New Ancient Greek texts produced in a wide range of contexts, including universities, Jesuit colleges, courts, churches, diplomatic correspondence, gift culture, portraiture, and occasional celebrations. Attention is given both to canonical figures and to lesser-known or forgotten authors, as well as to material transmission, manuscript and print culture, multilingualism, and practices of imitation, translation, and code-switching.
Chronologically and geographically broad, the conference traces New Ancient Greek literature from early modern Western Europe to Eastern Europe and the modern period, highlighting its circulation across confessional, political, and cultural boundaries. Several panels focus on performative dimensions of Greek writing—such as staged drama, school performances, public orations, and devotional practices—while others address private writing, epistolary networks, and reader reception.
By situating New Ancient Greek literature at the intersection of antiquity, Byzantium, and modernity, the conference seeks to advance a more integrated understanding of the long literary afterlife of Ancient Greek and to promote dialogue across disciplines such as classical studies, Byzantine studies, Renaissance and early modern studies, Neo-Latin studies, intellectual history, performance studies, and art history.
TERUG NAAR OVERZICHT

PRAKTISCHE INFO

  • DATUM
    08 juli, 2026
  • LOCATIE
    icon
    Edward Van Evenstraat 4
    Leuven
    Aula Emma Vorlat & Couvreur Room, Agora Learning Centre
  • DOELGROEP
    PhD postdoc ZAP
  • TAAL EVENEMENT
    ENGELS
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ONZE UNIVERSITEITEN