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- Convenor:
-
Leonor Santa Bárbara
(FCSH/UNL)
Send message to Convenor
- Location:
- Bloco 1, Sala 0.06
- Start time:
- 12 July, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
Ancient civilisations believed that the earth was surrounded by the Ocean. Seen as a big river, it was also personified as the ancestor of all rivers. As such, it was a source of different kinds of stories.
Long Abstract:
Ocean was considered by the Ancients to be one of the Titans and as a big river surrounding the world. The earth was a kind of flat disc. As such, it defined the limits of the earth - North, South, East and West. It was the father of several rivers, e.g. the Nile and the Alpheus. According to Hesiod, the Ocean conceived with Tethys at least three thousand rivers. Ocean and Tethys also had daughters - the Oceanids, considered as all sorts of water courses and springs.
The idea of a big sea surrounding the whole earth explains some stories by Lucian of Samosata concerning a voyage to the moon by boat. On the other hand, some modern writers seem to believe that Alexander's expedition Eastwards was a way to reach the Ocean and then easily return home.
The purpose of this panel is to discuss how the Ocean was seen by the Ancients and how this is reflected in modern culture.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Vassil Anastassov (Independent scholar)
Paper short abstract:
The paper deals with the metaphorical meaning of water as the demarcation line between two worlds in myths and literature.
Paper long abstract:
The paper deals with the metaphorical meaning of water stripes as the demarcation lines between two worlds in myths and literature. They play an important role in the creation of figures of symbolic value, such as heroes, liberators and messiahs and gods.It is assumed that the ocean was primarily perceived as the border of the world of humans separating it from a mysterious omnipotent power. It analyzes "water" in the journey of Odysseus as the space that turns him into the hero who re-establishes the glory of his birthplace. A parallel with the story of Beowulf confirms the idea of "water stripes" as the symbols of border lines between unfair suffering and miraculous liberation.The departing of the Red Sea in the Old Testament story confirms the "magic" significance of water as an agent in the struggle between slavery and social welfare. In more recent historical times "ocean stories" continue, with less metaphysical moments,to maintain their mediating role in the difficult path of humans to happiness, as for example in the case of the Americas as a new land of opportunity for people coming from across the "stripe of water". All of the above is taken as an evidence for the power of water into create narratives of hope,justice,freedom and happiness in human consciousness
João Pereira de Matos (CHAM)
Paper short abstract:
We want to explore the role of the water as flux in Homer's Odyssey in the context of Ulysses' journey to Hades: here, we will argue, the aquatic element is a symbol for the physical and mental vitality of life and the flow of temporality that opposes the stasis and mental paralysis of death.
Paper long abstract:
Within the larger narrative of Ulysses' great voyage back to Ithaca we can also find the episode of the more restricted journey to Hades. Although there are a number of other
characters in this sub-plot, Ulysses's goal is to talk to Tiresias - a fascinating character who himself embodies the concept of inner journey, just think of him as inspiration for Virginia Wolf's Orlando - which will point the way to the success of the central plot. It is by water, descending the river Oceanus, that Odysseus can reach Hades, because, in the economy of the Odyssey, the meaning of water is fundamental: it separates but unites; it is an obstacle but is also a way of accessing the central goal of returning home.
Besides that central role the relation between this and the concepts of death and truth as lucidity has, in the Odyssey, a very special meaning: after death one's whole biography is fixed, a nunc stans of immutability. In Hades there is no true becoming, that is, there is neither movement, nor growth or corruption. Each is a fixed image of what was, a shadow or phantasmagoria because that temporal immobility is also a mental paralysis.
In the symbolic game which is the Odyssey, this idea of the flow of temporality is represented by the aquatic element which is simultaneously the means of access and image of that mutability that is lost with one's death.
Hayrettin Yucesoy (Washington University in St. Louis)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the literature of Abbasid maritime explorations in the Indian Ocean. The polyphonic texts of voyages reveal not a politically innocent scholarship that can be exhausted within the discourse of "cultural-interaction," but rather, a politically situated body of knowledge.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines Abbasid maritime explorations in the Indian Ocean by deconstructing the knowledge produced about it from the vantage point of power and politics in the 9th-10th centuries. The literature of seafaring and geography not only maps the maritime geography of the Indian Ocean from the vantage point of the Abbasid center, but also constructs the images of the Other by supplying observational knowledge, stereotypes, and imaginaries—human and geographic. It makes the "unknown" a culturally familiar, rationally knowable, and economically exploitable space and thus creates new meaning for the reader that privileges Abbasid priorities, ambitions, and identities. The knowledge of the Other is constructed as much from available information at the Abbasid scholar's disposal, which they appropriated for their interest and use, as from their own observations. This polyphonic and intertextual literature is not a politically innocent scholarship that can simply be exhausted within the scholarly discourse of "cultural-interaction," but rather, a politically situated body of knowledge whose critique and deconstruction help in de-naturalizing and de-universalizing its meaning.
Simon Edwards (Center for Inter-American Studies - University of Graz)
Paper short abstract:
This paper intends to analyse the relations between Melville's Moby Dick and classical literature.
Paper long abstract:
Moby Dick, set in the 'watery two thirds of the world', is notoriously richly allusive. Bruce Franklin's The Wake of the Gods offers one of the boldest interpretative maps by showing how the whole body of his work is invested in pre-classical, even non-Western mythology, drawing on Diodorus Siculus' and Plutarch's attribution of the origins of myth to the Egyptians. During the period of its composition Melville and Hawthorne were close neighbours in the Berkshire Hills. Precisely when Hawthorne was working on his versions of the Tanglewood Tales. Melville's prodigious reading in the five preceding years must have been capped by his friend's shared interest in the Greek stories, divinities and heroes - versions of earlier myths - that served to bring into question the Calvinist convictions in which they had both been reared. Moreover Melville, from his Polynesian experiences (cf Typee, Omoo, and Mardi), had developed an interest in that wider comparative anthropology that had vexed the Christian world from the time of the neo-Platonists with some of whose English disciples he had become familiar. Diffusionist theories of the nature of religious cults, the rise of Freemasonry whose symbols are inscribed on the dollar bill, Champollion's de-coding of the Rosetta Stone (as well as William Jones' postulation of a common Indo-european tongue) were part of this intellectual culture.
If Hawthorne's project was to 'Americanise' in popular form the Greek tales then Melville sought to explore what underlay the American impulse to industrial progress, maritime adventure, and an aspirant global hegemony.
Leonor Santa Bárbara (FCSH/UNL)
Paper short abstract:
This paper intends to work on different travel narratives from Classical Antiquity to the Modern Age, focusing on the presentation of risks and dangers.
Paper long abstract:
The earliest European travel narrative is Homer's Odyssey. The risks and dangers affecting Odysseus consist of shipwreck and of meeting several marvellous beings, e.g. the Sirens or the Cyclops. Five centuries later, Apollonius Rhodius gave us The Argonauts, a poem about Jason travelling to Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece, describing different risks.
More recently, Camões describes the perils faced by Vasco da Gama, while sailing to India. Other narratives, as Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels or Moby Dick describe adventures that take place in different kinds of seas and oceans - Atlantic, Indian, Pacific.
What kinds of risks and dangers do they present and how do they relate to classical narratives is what this paper intends to discuss.
Joana Mestre Costa (University of Aveiro)
Paper short abstract:
This work focuses on a certain vision of Asia emerging from Loureiro’s Flora Cochinchinensis (1790). Heir to the Humanism and in the frame of the East-West interchange, this Jesuit’s magnum opus symbolises the scientific effort and summarises the cultural remarks of nearly 4 decades in Cochinchina.
Paper long abstract:
The Portuguese maritime endeavour inaugurated, with the sea route to India, a movement of goods and people, as well as a cultural and scientific exchange, connecting Europe and the Far East, later substantiated and cemented by the Jesuit presence in the Levant.
João de Loureiro, a Portuguese Jesuit priest, was, in the mid eighteenth century, sent to Cochinchina, historical region of Southeast Asia with a long bank bathed by the South China Sea. Moved by his acknowledged intellectual curiosity and the difficulties involved with both being accepted as a Christian apostle and accessing European pharmacy, this missionary devoted himself to botanic research, counting on the regular maritime routes to receive western reference works and to dispatch eastern unrecorded specimens and thus increasing the East-West interchange.
As an effect of his scientific effort, he was made a member of the Royal Society and also joined in the Lisbon Academy of Sciences. Furthermore, when, after about 40 years, the Jesuit returned to Lisbon, his Flora Cochinchinensis was published in 1790 at the expense of the Portuguese Academy.
A groundbreaking pharmacognostical work, this Flora included 185 new genera and nearly 1300 Eastern species and their therapeutic applications. Along with that noteworthy scientific enhancement, the work encompasses enriching images of Asian lands and peoples.
Mainly considering its preface, whose translation from Latin and analysis we have done, we intend an approach to the Flora Cochinchinensis, especially within the framework of scientific and cultural exchange between Europe and the East started in the European Humanism.
Antonio Ruiz Castellanos (University of Cádiz (Spain))
Paper short abstract:
Hasta Regia (Cádiz, Spain) was depicted as the capital of the Turdetani. But is it the truth? Its ruins suggest its greatness, but does the epigraphy confirm it?
Paper long abstract:
Hasta Regia or Asta (Mesas de Asta, Jerez de la Frontera, Cadiz, Spain), was a town of the province of Baetica (Pliny), situated at the mouth of the river Baetis near the Lacus Ligustinus, and 16 miles from the port of Gades (Ant. It. 409.4). It belonged to the Conventus Gaditanus (Plin. 3.11; Mela 3.4) and was a Turdetanian settlement. It was called Asta in Strabo (3.140), elsewhere Hasta (Livy 39.21; Bellum Hisp. chs. 26, 36; Ravenna Cosmographer 4.43). In 187 B.C. Caius Atinius captured this town which finally was conquered by Caesar in 45 B.C. The city minted coins [P. COL. ASTA RE(gia). F(elix)]. It was the third post on the military Via Augusta from Cadiz to Cordoba.
Andalusian local antiquarian historiography has depicted Hasta as the location of the city of Tartessos and the capital of Turdetania. But was it really the capital of the Turdetani? While its ruins suggest its former greatness, the epigraphical information leaves some doubt. The interest of local historiographers may have exaggerated its historical role.
Maria do Rosário Laureano Santos (FCSH / NOVA)
Paper short abstract:
The city of Lisbon is present in the Portuguese art and literature, mainly from the 16 century onwards, and there are many reasons that justify and contribute to this presence. Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcelos is one of the authors who emphasizes these reasons in the Comédia Ulissipo (c. 1561).
Paper long abstract:
The Comédia Ulissipo (c. 1561) is a long prose text, in which meet different literary influences, that, at the same time, characterize it as a work of the Renaissance and give distinctive aspects reflecting features of contemporary Portuguese society. The action takes place mainly in the city of Lisbon, but there are also references to India and maritime travel through the Atlantic and Indian oceans. The intrigue centres on the family of Ulissipo and the social relationships of its members, connecting the main character with the different spaces of the city of the same name, as a way of linking them in the wider plot. By exploring this text, which provides a cultural and linguistic testimony to 16th century Lisbon, it is intended to analyse the social and cultural activities associated with the most frequented places of the city.