Dissertations by Alessandra Tafaro
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Conference Organisation by Alessandra Tafaro
Call for Papers
Anonymity, Un-Originality, Collectivity – Contested Modes of Authorship
... more Call for Papers
Anonymity, Un-Originality, Collectivity – Contested Modes of Authorship
Interdisciplinary conference at the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS), University of Warwick, UK
20 – 21 May 2022
Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
Dr Tom Geue, University of St Andrews
Dr Nicholas Thoburn, University of Manchester
Organised by Dr Leonello Bazzurro, Dr Melissa Pawelski, Dr Alessandra Tafaro, Dr Leanne Weston
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CALL FOR PAPERS
When in 2012 the artist Robert Montgomery placed the aluminium letters of his ... more CALL FOR PAPERS
When in 2012 the artist Robert Montgomery placed the aluminium letters of his poem ‘All palaces are/ temporary palaces’ in an empty swimming pool (Stattbad Wedding, Berlin), he deliberately embodied the written word into a physical context. With his ‘light poems’, he demonstrates how poetry can be a billboard, a tattooed body or even a gift to exchange for coffee: this interplay between word and object was already a quintessential feature of Graeco-Roman 'epigrammatic' poetry, which could be scratched or carved into walls, statues and stones. In our era of ‘Instagram poets’ and the quotation-culture of tweets, bits of poetry are spread across urban landscapes and social networks in the most variated forms, ingeniously combining words and objects, and making us aware of our inheritance of ideas developed in different ways in classical antiquity, linking poetry, materiality and objects.
The ancient epigram, a poetic form conscious of its ‘writtenness’ which originated as inscription (on gravestones, monuments and other objects) and which in fascinating ways lives on in our contemporary society, foregrounds questions about the materiality of texts in ways that we will take as a point of departure for this inter-disciplinary conference. When poetry is engraved on stones, scratched into walls, written on an object, how does the nature and use of that object affect our interpretation of the text? To what extent and how does the medium on which a poem is viewed influence the reader/viewer’s perception of it? This conference aims to investigate the shift between the epigram as embodying an inseparability of text and materiality, as conceived in the classical period and in the Renaissance (Neo-Latin epigram), and the modern re-interpretation of poetry on objects.
Our one-day conference will explore the following research topics:
• Theoretical/ philosophical perspectives on poetry and materiality;
• The epigram book/ epigram as inscription;
• Continuities and differences between the conception of object and text in ancient/Renaissance epigrams and the new material expressions of modern poetry;
• (Responses to) the visual context/visuality of epigrams;
• The extent to which readings of ancient and/or Renaissance epigram might spur new perspectives on the contemporary production and consumption of poetry;
• The extent to which ‘epigram’ is a useful category/ recognizable poetic form in the modern world;
• The emergence of the Neo-Latin epigram.
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Publications by Alessandra Tafaro
The Papers of the British School at Rome, 2024
The present article offers a new interpretation of the gladiatorial graffiti preserved within the... more The present article offers a new interpretation of the gladiatorial graffiti preserved within the Flavian Amphitheatre from a contextual perspective. Although recent scholarship has set a solid foundation for investigating the role and nature of gladiatorial graffiti, a contextual examination of this epigraphic category represents a major desideratum. The article investigates graffiti within the epigraphic environment of the Flavian Amphitheatre. It examines the juxtaposition of graffiti and official inscriptions, their interaction with spatial and material surroundings and their distinctiveness as visual and material media with which to perpetuate the fleeting arena performances. By combining close reading with a new visual representation of gladiatorial graffiti – created digitally upon autoptic study – the article provides the reader with the first systematic analysis of this exceptional epigraphic record. Challenging critical notions of impermanence and instability, the article explores strategies of memorialization and techniques of temporality performed by graffiti, inviting reflection on the negotiation of and paradoxical takes on the contradictory concept of monumentality in the arena.
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On account of the great debate surrounding the relationship between the Carmina Latina Epigraphi... more On account of the great debate surrounding the relationship between the Carmina Latina Epigraphica and Latin authors – to what extent a literary influence is traceable in verse epitaphs or, rather, whether major writers drew fully from the epigraphic repertoire, composing « real CLE » – this paper aims to shed light on a highly interesting case-study : Martial’s funerary cycle on Scorpus the charioteer (Epigrams 10.50-10.53). While 10.50 is an epikedion, dense with both literary and epigraphic echoes, 10.53 is an authentic epitaph. Unexpectedly, both CLE 539 and especially CLE 1279, seem to have been deeply influenced by Martial, emulating his clausolae. Given that the poet has reworked proper themes of the epigraphic context with his own wordings, which role did the aemulatio of the toto notus in orbe Martialis play on the anonymous auctores of CLE ?
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Papers by Alessandra Tafaro
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Dissertations by Alessandra Tafaro
Conference Organisation by Alessandra Tafaro
Anonymity, Un-Originality, Collectivity – Contested Modes of Authorship
Interdisciplinary conference at the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS), University of Warwick, UK
20 – 21 May 2022
Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
Dr Tom Geue, University of St Andrews
Dr Nicholas Thoburn, University of Manchester
Organised by Dr Leonello Bazzurro, Dr Melissa Pawelski, Dr Alessandra Tafaro, Dr Leanne Weston
When in 2012 the artist Robert Montgomery placed the aluminium letters of his poem ‘All palaces are/ temporary palaces’ in an empty swimming pool (Stattbad Wedding, Berlin), he deliberately embodied the written word into a physical context. With his ‘light poems’, he demonstrates how poetry can be a billboard, a tattooed body or even a gift to exchange for coffee: this interplay between word and object was already a quintessential feature of Graeco-Roman 'epigrammatic' poetry, which could be scratched or carved into walls, statues and stones. In our era of ‘Instagram poets’ and the quotation-culture of tweets, bits of poetry are spread across urban landscapes and social networks in the most variated forms, ingeniously combining words and objects, and making us aware of our inheritance of ideas developed in different ways in classical antiquity, linking poetry, materiality and objects.
The ancient epigram, a poetic form conscious of its ‘writtenness’ which originated as inscription (on gravestones, monuments and other objects) and which in fascinating ways lives on in our contemporary society, foregrounds questions about the materiality of texts in ways that we will take as a point of departure for this inter-disciplinary conference. When poetry is engraved on stones, scratched into walls, written on an object, how does the nature and use of that object affect our interpretation of the text? To what extent and how does the medium on which a poem is viewed influence the reader/viewer’s perception of it? This conference aims to investigate the shift between the epigram as embodying an inseparability of text and materiality, as conceived in the classical period and in the Renaissance (Neo-Latin epigram), and the modern re-interpretation of poetry on objects.
Our one-day conference will explore the following research topics:
• Theoretical/ philosophical perspectives on poetry and materiality;
• The epigram book/ epigram as inscription;
• Continuities and differences between the conception of object and text in ancient/Renaissance epigrams and the new material expressions of modern poetry;
• (Responses to) the visual context/visuality of epigrams;
• The extent to which readings of ancient and/or Renaissance epigram might spur new perspectives on the contemporary production and consumption of poetry;
• The extent to which ‘epigram’ is a useful category/ recognizable poetic form in the modern world;
• The emergence of the Neo-Latin epigram.
Publications by Alessandra Tafaro
Papers by Alessandra Tafaro
Anonymity, Un-Originality, Collectivity – Contested Modes of Authorship
Interdisciplinary conference at the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS), University of Warwick, UK
20 – 21 May 2022
Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
Dr Tom Geue, University of St Andrews
Dr Nicholas Thoburn, University of Manchester
Organised by Dr Leonello Bazzurro, Dr Melissa Pawelski, Dr Alessandra Tafaro, Dr Leanne Weston
When in 2012 the artist Robert Montgomery placed the aluminium letters of his poem ‘All palaces are/ temporary palaces’ in an empty swimming pool (Stattbad Wedding, Berlin), he deliberately embodied the written word into a physical context. With his ‘light poems’, he demonstrates how poetry can be a billboard, a tattooed body or even a gift to exchange for coffee: this interplay between word and object was already a quintessential feature of Graeco-Roman 'epigrammatic' poetry, which could be scratched or carved into walls, statues and stones. In our era of ‘Instagram poets’ and the quotation-culture of tweets, bits of poetry are spread across urban landscapes and social networks in the most variated forms, ingeniously combining words and objects, and making us aware of our inheritance of ideas developed in different ways in classical antiquity, linking poetry, materiality and objects.
The ancient epigram, a poetic form conscious of its ‘writtenness’ which originated as inscription (on gravestones, monuments and other objects) and which in fascinating ways lives on in our contemporary society, foregrounds questions about the materiality of texts in ways that we will take as a point of departure for this inter-disciplinary conference. When poetry is engraved on stones, scratched into walls, written on an object, how does the nature and use of that object affect our interpretation of the text? To what extent and how does the medium on which a poem is viewed influence the reader/viewer’s perception of it? This conference aims to investigate the shift between the epigram as embodying an inseparability of text and materiality, as conceived in the classical period and in the Renaissance (Neo-Latin epigram), and the modern re-interpretation of poetry on objects.
Our one-day conference will explore the following research topics:
• Theoretical/ philosophical perspectives on poetry and materiality;
• The epigram book/ epigram as inscription;
• Continuities and differences between the conception of object and text in ancient/Renaissance epigrams and the new material expressions of modern poetry;
• (Responses to) the visual context/visuality of epigrams;
• The extent to which readings of ancient and/or Renaissance epigram might spur new perspectives on the contemporary production and consumption of poetry;
• The extent to which ‘epigram’ is a useful category/ recognizable poetic form in the modern world;
• The emergence of the Neo-Latin epigram.