This is a past event
A Conference to Commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the Birth of Sir Herbert Grierson
This international, interdisciplinary conference commemorates the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sir Herbert Grierson (1866-1960), Inaugural Chalmers Professor of English Literature at the University of Aberdeen, who was also a Classicist and whose work was profoundly influenced by Classical themes. The objective of the conference is to provide new analyses of the ways in which Classical learning was changed, manipulated, re- and mis-interpreted, performed, and subverted (deliberately or otherwise) in Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the early modern world.
Professor Cairns Craig, University of Aberdeen, editor of Vita Mea: The Autobiography of Sir Herbert J.C. Grierson (Aberdeen University Press, 2014), will open the event by discussing Grierson’s life, his ground-breaking initiatives at the Universities of Aberdeen and Edinburgh, his seminal publications in the fields of English and Scottish literature and far beyond, his impact on the great poets of his time, and how this unassuming scholar achieved iconic stature in the academic profession.
Conference Programme
Friday 15 January
The Craig Suite (7th Floor), The Sir Duncan Rice Library
12-1pm Welcome, Registration, & Lunch (provided for all attendees)
1-2pm Keynote Lecture: Cairns Craig, University of Aberdeen
Herbert Grierson and the Making of Modern Poetry
Chair: Aideen O’Leary
2-3pm Virgil Transformed?
Elisabetta Tarantino, University of Oxford
The Colour of Sand: The Imitation and Subversion of Aeneid 6.642-644 from Ancient Rome to Early Modern Europe
David Adkins, University of Toronto
The Relics of Hippolytus: Revisions of Virgil in Faerie Queene 1.v and Peristephanon 11
Chair: Syrithe Pugh
3-3.30pm Coffee
3.30-4.30pm Keynote Lecture: Ralph M. Rosen, University of Pennsylvania
‘Down with Skool!’: Subverting the Classical within the Classical
Chair: Samantha Newington
4.30pm University of Aberdeen Celtic Society Event, The Friends’ Room, Special Collections (all welcome)
6pm Informal dinner, Kilau Coffee, 57/59 High Street, Old Aberdeen http://www.visitaberdeen.com/food-and-drink/view/kilau
Saturday 16 January
The Craig Suite (7th Floor),The Sir Duncan Rice Library
9.30-10am Reinterpretations of the Classics in the North
Lisa Collinson, University of Aberdeen
Þrymskviða and Casina: Latin Comedy in Medieval Scandinavia?
Chair: Aideen O’Leary
10-10.30am Coffee
10.30-11.30am Keynote Session: Horace and Homer in Gaelic
Donald Meek
John Maclean, Rector of Oban High School: Life, Work and Legacy
William Gillies, University of Edinburgh
John Maclean as a Translator of Classical Verse
Chair: Derrick McClure
11.30am-12.30pm Vernacular ‘Translations’ of Classical Literature
Mariamne Briggs, University of Edinburgh
The Metamorphoses of Statius’s Thebaid in Medieval Ireland
Conor Leahy, St John’s College, Cambridge
Writing About the Classics: The Prologues of Gavin Douglas
Chair: Patrick Crotty
12.30-1.30pm Lunch (provided for all attendees)
1.30-3pm Orpheus: The Singer and the Song
Samantha Newington, University of Aberdeen
Classical Orpheus
Syrithe Pugh, University of Aberdeen
Rescuing Orpheus: Spenser’s Revision of Virgil
Helen Lynch, University of Aberdeen
Once, Twice, Three Times a Lady: Milton as Female Orpheus
Chair: Andrew Laird
3-4pm Keynote Lecture: Anna Caughey, Harris Manchester College, Oxford
Latin and French Sources in Henryson's ‘Morall Fabillis’
Chair: Aideen O’Leary
4-4.30pm Coffee
4.30-5.30pm Ancient Philosophy in the Middle Ages
Aideen O’Leary, University of Aberdeen
Persius and Eleventh-century Stoicism
Daniel Watson, Maynooth University
The Origen of the Theses: Metempsychosis and the Conciliation of Patristic Authorities in Medieval Irish Literature
Chair: David Dumville
5.30-6.30pm Reception, with Scottish traditional music by Nathan Bissette, Alastair Duthie and Helen Lynch, aka Druidhean Feidh, to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sir Herbert Grierson
Exhibition Area, Ground Floor, The Sir Duncan Rice Library
7.30pm Conference Dinner, La Lombarda Italian Restaurant, 2 King St, Castlegate, Aberdeen http://www.lalombarda.co.uk
Sunday 17 January
Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies
Humanity Manse, 19 College Bounds
10-11am Historical Manipulations of the Classics
Henry Gough-Cooper, Independent Scholar
A Creative Restructuring of Isidore of Seville's Chronicorum epitome in Early Thirteenth-century Wales: Method and Purpose
Ian Olson, Independent Scholar
A Conflict’s Confabulation. Never Mind the Latin – See the Shining Armour!
Chair: Lisa Collinson
11-11.45am David Wheatley, University of Aberdeen
‘One Loses One’s Classics’: Remnants of Antiquity in Samuel Beckett
Chair: Aideen O’Leary
11.45am-1.30pm Lunch (provided for all attendees)
1.30-2.15pm Andrew Laird, Brown University and Warwick
Aztec Humanists: Appropriations of European Classical Learning by Native Writers in Post-conquest Mexico
Chair: Syrithe Pugh
2.15-3pm Jane Stevenson, University of Aberdeen
Classical Models of Exile and Return
Chair: Aideen O’Leary
3-3.30pm Coffee and Concluding Discussion
Conference Exhibition
All are welcome to view the exhibition which will be held throughout the conference in the Exhibition Area, Ground Floor, The Sir Duncan Rice Library. Items have been selected from Special Collections to showcase Grierson’s autobiography and family life, and to illustrate his achievement in inaugurating Anglo-Saxon studies at Aberdeen.
The organisers gratefully acknowledge the support of the following
Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature