Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies

Kostas Yiavis (Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Program in Hellenic Studies)
Respondent: Marina S. Brownlee (Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures and Comparative Literature)
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103

The late-mediaeval Pierre de Provence et la belle Maguelonne is arguably one of the most popular composite romances in European literature. It now survives in over three hundred manuscripts and early books (in Greek, English, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, High German, Italian, Spanish, possibly Armenian and Hebrew). Pierre has a distinct periodic valence, narrating as it does a knightly story. The sixteenth-century Imberios and Margarona is a powerfully revisionist subsequent version. It responds to the new cultural context, and is in line with the needs of new audiences. Imberios belongs to an explosive period of Greek literature, which makes a decisive contribution to the enhancement of vernacular authority. This lecture examines the ways in which this adaptation is able to reconfigure the originary discourse, and evolve a conceptual vocabulary that precipitates the early modern.

Kostas Yiavis received his Ph.D. in Modern and Mediaeval Languages from the University of Cambridge (2006). He is Lecturer in Modern Greek at Cornell University, and he is the book editor of the Anglo-Hellenic Review. His interests include Greek literature, history and culture from the twelfth century to the present; comparative hermeneutics and philology; the cultural history of radical change; the interaction of literature with seemingly more powerful discourses, such as philosophy, history and theology. His critical edition of the sixteenth-century romance Imberios and Margarona is forthcoming from by the Cultural Foundation of the National Bank of Greece (MIET). His Recent articles and reviews have appeared in Byzantinische Zeitschrift, Hellenika, Bulletin of Judaeo-Greek Studies, Journal of Hellenic Studies, English Historical Review, Classical Review. Yiavis is now working on topoi from Homer to Persian epic to mediaeval Western European poetry, and on a monograph about the first translations of Western literature into vernacular Greek.  [last updated 2008]

Undergraduate Students: Scott L. Arcenas '09, William P. Sullivan '09
Graduate Students: Virginia E. Clark (Classics), David W. Jorgensen (Religion), Leigh A. Lieberman (Art & Archaeology), Simon M. Oswald (Classics), Giuseppe A. Ricci (History), Geoffrey S. Smith (Religion), John A. Tully (Classics), Joshua J. Vandiver (Politics), Denton A. Walthall (Art & Archaeology)
with
Michael A. Flower, Department of Classics
Nino Luraghi, Department of Classics
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103

Students enrolled in the CLA547/PAW501/HLS501 seminar on “Sparta and the Peloponnese,” taught by Michael A. Flower and Nino Luraghi, travelled to Greece over the fall midterm break. The class trip was funded by the Program in Hellenic Studies, with the support of the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund. The students will present their findings based on their fieldwork in the Peloponnese.

Co-sponsored by: Department of Classics and Program in the Ancient World

Bonna D. Wescoat (Emory University)
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103
Co-sponsored by: Department of Classics and Program in the Ancient World

In antiquity, the fame of Samothrace, a tiny windswept island in the northern Aegean, emanated from its mystery cult of the Megaloi Theoi, the Great Gods, whose rites of initiation promised protection at sea and the opportunity to "become a better and more pious person in all ways" (Diodorus). The rituals were held in silent trust by the community of initiated. Their power to transform is most palpably signaled today by the innovative buildings that once framed the rites within the sacred landscape - a dozen extraordinary monuments, each distinct within the history of Greek architecture, each deftly positioned within the terrain, each archaeologically well-preserved although no longer standing. In concert with the landscape, these monuments justifiably make Samothrace one of the most important expressions of Hellenistic sacred space in the ancient Mediterranean. In this lecture, Bonna Wescoat investigates how architecture was consciously deployed within the complex terrain of the Sanctuary to heighten the experience of both seclusion and revelation that are integral to the cult. A preliminary three-dimensional model of the Sanctuary (designed by J. Matthew Harrington) serves as an analytic tool for recreating the built environment and the experience of the prospective initiate. Tracking the ancient passage of the pilgrim demonstrates that the buildings were not merely placed opportunistically - the impression created in plan - but instead were positioned and designed to screen and reveal, to heighten the experience of descent, to shape discretely sequestered spaces, and to serve as key visual loci within the sacred space.

Bonna D. Wescoat is an archaeologist and architectural historian whose areas of expertise include the intersection of ancient Greek sacred architecture and ritual practice, Greek iconography, and the architectural orders. She has conducted field work in Sicily, Turkey, and Greece, the first culminating in Syracuse, The Fairest Greek City, the second in The Temple of Athena at Assos, and the third in the recently submitted Samothrace; excavations conducted by the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University: Vol. 9, The Monuments of the Eastern Hill. Wescoat continues to work in the Sanctuary of the Great Gods on a wide range of projects. Wescoat received her graduate degrees as a Marshall Scholar to Great Britain. She is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, and in 2006-07, was Whitehead Visiting Professor at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. She now serves as Associate Professor of Art History at Emory University and Adjunct Associate Professor of Fine Arts at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU.  [last updated 2008]

Polina Tambakaki (Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Program in Hellenic Studies)
Respondent: Kofi V. Agawu (Department of Music)
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103

This paper explores how the poets T.S. Eliot and George Seferis used music in order to speak about their own art. Eliot and Seferis (1948 and 1963 Nobel laureates, respectively) provide a fruitful field for comparison. Seferis himself acknowledged Eliot as one of his major teachers, and while the cultural background and breadth of influence of each poet were different, each approached music as non-musicians. They both felt they could speak about music as poets both in their prose texts (e.g., Eliot's The Music of Poetry and Seferis's preface to the latest English edition of Stravinsky's Poetics of Music) and, of course, in their poetry. Some verses from Eliot's Four Quartets, in particular, are quoted in seminal musicological studies as encapsulating the essence of 'musical listening.' This paper examines to what extent the musical activity of these two poets determined their 'right' to speak about music; and how their relationship to the written page was affected by their musical experience as ordinary (that is, musically 'non-literate') listeners.

Polina Tambakaki received her Ph.D. from King's College London with a dissertation on "The 'Musical Poetics' of George Seferis: A Case Study in the Relationship of Modernist Poetry to Music." Her research draws on musicological and cultural studies about the musical experience of the ordinary listener, and on literary studies focusing on the reading experience. Her study 'Gymnopaidies' by George Seferis-Erik Satie (2002, in Greek) dealt with the musical allusions of Seferis's collection Gymnopaidia. Her research interests also include the allusions of modern poets to ancient texts. Her most recent article "A Modern Poet Reads Ancient War Texts: Politics, Life and Death in George Seferis' 'The Last Day'" was published by Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies (2008). She is currently working on a book form of her thesis, to be published in Greek (forthcoming, 2010).  [last updated 2008]