Harvard University, December 4-5, 2009After the highly successful 1st Biennial International Conference on Modern Greek Studies in December 2007, which was dedicated to the work of C. P. Cavafy,

the Program of Modern Greek Studies at Harvard-George Seferis Chair announces the 2nd Biennial International Conference on Byzantine and Early Modern Greek Fictional Writing, December 4-5, 2009

Please take note that the 23rd Nicholas Christopher Memorial Lecture in Modern Greek Studies will be also held in the frame of this Conference on December

4rth, at 6:30 P.M. in 202 Harvard Hall. The Keynote Speaker, Professor Elizabeth Jeffreys, Oxford University, will be talking on the topic of “Digenes

Akrites and Late Byzantine Verse Narrative.”

The conference is co-sponsored by the Medieval Studies Committee and the Department of the Classics.

Full details of both these events are offered in the Program of the Conference below, as well as on our website

(http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~modgreek/events.html):

2nd Biennial International Conference on Byzantine and Early Modern Greek Fictional Writing

& The 23rd Nicholas Christopher Memorial Lecture in Modern Greek Studies

December 4-5, 2009, Harvard Hall 202PROGRAM

Friday, December 4

11:00-12:45 Opening Remarks

Panagiotis Roilos, Professor of Modern Greek Studies and of Comparative Literature, Director, Program of Modern Greek Studies, Harvard University

Jan Ziolkowski, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Medieval Latin, Director, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Harvard University

Jeffrey Hamburger, Kuno Francke Professor of German Art and Culture Chair, The Medieval Studies Committee, Harvard University

Fictional Narratives across Genres

Thomas Hägg

"Fiction and Factography in the Life of St. Antony"

Paul Magdalino

"Apocryphal Narrative: Patterns of Fiction in Byzantine Prophetic and Patriographic Literature"

Paolo Cesaretti

"The Exegete as a Story-teller: The Dawn of Humankind according to Eustathios of

Thessalonike"

14:30-16:15 Narrative Strategies and Discursive Forms

Michael Jeffreys

"Three Forms of Byzantine and Modern Greek Oral Narrative and Their Written Reflections: Unrhymed, Rhymed, and Tragoudia"

Anthony Kaldellis

"Philosophy and the Rise of Literary Fiction in Byzantium"

Niels Gaul

"Dialogic Constructions of Fictitious Worlds and Literary ʽRealitiesʼ: Late

Byzantine Dialogues and Mimesis"

18:30 The Twenty-Third Nicholas Christopher Memorial Lecture in Modern Greek Studies

Elizabeth Jeffreys

"Digenes Akrites and Late Byzantine Verse Narrative"

Saturday, December 5

11:00-12:45 Flights of Imagination: Discursive and Visual Representations

Carolina Cupane

"Other Worlds, Other Voices: Form and Function of the Marvelous in Late Byzantine Fiction"

Ioli Kalavrezou

"The Marvelous Flight of Alexander in Byzantium"

Massimo Peri

"The Four-color Tradition in Early Demotic Greek Poetry"

14:30-16:15 Conceptualizing Genres

Ulrich Moennig

"Literary Genres and Mixture of Generic Features"

Roderick Beaton

"Hopeful Monsters or Living Fossils? The Komnenian Novels and Their Medieval and

Modern Reception"

Panagiotis Roilos

"Toward a Historical Anthropology of Byzantine Fictional Writing"

Vassiliki Rapti