Representing Self-Transformation and Conversion in Literature of the Roman World
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Augustine's Confessions recounts his own conversion to Christianity, rehearsing the incremental power of repeated spiritual exercises and offering his own experience as a model for others. The Confessions is often heralded as a pivotal moment in the history of conceptions of the self, and the notion of conversion has played an important (though not uncontroversial) role in distinguishing between Christian and Pagan religion. Yet accounts of, recipes for, and enactments of inner transformation, conversion and changes of life, are articulated, in very diverse ways, by a number of earlier Roman authors (several of whom were very familiar to Augustine). Does the concept of conversion have value not only as a way to link or distinguish pagan and Christian but also to make connections between classical texts?
Location: River Room, King's College London
Charges: £40 for both days, £20 for one.
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There will be student bursaries available, thanks to the generosity of the Classical Association. Contact william.fitzgerald@kcl.ac.uk
Monday 29th June
10: 15 Registration and coffee
10.30 Opening remarks
10.45 Rebecca Langlands
'Tasting the Hero's Blood: The Transformative Effect of Exempla upon the Moral Agent'.
11.45 Peter Singer
'Rhetoric, Therapy and Dialogue: Self-Transformation in Graeco-Roman Philosophical Texts and Persons'
12.45 lunch
1.45 Alex Dressler
'The Aesthetic Basis of Conversion from Cicero to Paulinus of Nola'
2.45 Ian Fielding
'Ausonius and the Ovidian Conversion of Paulinus of Nola'
3.45 tea
4.15 Elena Giusti
'Ovid's Teiresias: generic transformations from Metamorphoses into Tristia'
5.15 Shadi Bartsch
'The Conversion of the Aeneid: Fulgentius' Radical Hermeneutics'
6.15 drinks reception
Tuesday 30th June
9.30 Christopher Gill
'The Stoic Life as Ongoing Self-Transformation: Marcus Aurelius' Meditations'
10.30 Kurt Lampe
'The Pharmacology of Senecan Tragedy'
11.30 coffee
12 noon Michael Trapp
'Seeing the Light (or not) in Lucian's Conversion Stories'
1pm lunch
2pm Friedemann Drews
'Can an Ass Convert? Lucius' Prayer to Isis in Apuleius's Metamorphoses Compared to Augustine's Theory of Grace'
3pm Stuart Thompson
'The Scholar's Journey: the Christian-Philosophical Topos of Conversion'
4pm tea and concluding discussion
Convenors: Catharine Edwards (Birkbeck) and William Fitzgerald (KCL)
We are grateful for generous support from King's College London, Birkbeck, the Institute of Classical Studies and The Classical Association.