Ephemerity: Philology and Time

Lecture by Professor Dr. Isabella Tardin Cardoso, Universidade Estadual de Campinas.

Abstract

This lecture is a reflection on the ephemeral and on the untimeliness of philology as a discipline. According to the traditional understanding of its origin, philology was born in Hellenistic times as a reaction against the transitory character of the best thoughts and texts of the Ancients. If a central task for philology is to fight against the ephemeral character of its object, then we must acknowledge that not only the past of the culture that produced this object is constitutive for philology, but that also the impermanence of the current uestigia of this past is constitutive of the philological object itself. ■ Isabella Tardin Cardoso is Professor of Classics at one of Latin America’s leading universities (Unicamp). She has been a regular guest professor at Heidelberg University. Next to the theory of philology, her principal areas of research are Roman comedy and the topos of theatrum mundi, Cicero’s oratory and poetry, Augustan poetry, and the reception of classical texts.

Everyone welcome – no registration required.

The event is organised by CEMES research group: “Thinking the European Republic of Letters”

For more info, please write to qcb857@ku.dk.