Poetics of War. Remembering Conflict from Ancient Greece to the Great War - 17-18-19/06/2015, London

War, both in victory and defeat, in its glories and losses, is crucial in the formation of cultural memory. The memory of war can be used to build community, either through shared trauma or shared victory, and can influence the imaginary of a people or nation, providing a shared history around which the political community can unite. Conversely, war can function as an issue of contention, in which memories of loss can be used to dramatise socio-economic and political divisions. In modernity, the societal trauma of total war would seem to ensure that the remembrance of war would become a potential point of fracture in cultural politics. In Antiquity, the prevalence of war would appear to generate entirely different dynamic of remembrance and contention. And yet, the Classical literature of warfare heavily influenced the modern discourses of remembrance.

This conference seeks to address these issues through a consideration of the poetics of the remembrance of war in Antiquity and in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Britain. We focus on the following research questions:

• How was war remembered in Classical cultures? • How do communities form or fracture in the remembrance of wars? • How influential are notions of youth, masculinity, and heroism in the poetics of remembrance? • Is there a particularly modern poetic of remembrance and loss and when might that have emerged? • How does the Classical inflect modern notions of the remembrance of war?

Sessions include

1. Greece: Remembering the Citizen-Hero 2. Rome: Remembering Wars Imperial and Civil 3. Reception: Remembering Past Wars 4. Late Victorian: Remembering Distant Wars 5. WWI: Remembering Total War

FECHA/DATE/DATA: 17-18-19/06/2015

LUGAR/LOCATION/LUOGO: University College London (London, England)

ORGANIZADOR/ORGANIZER/ORGANIZZATORE: Ifigeneia Giannadaki

INFO: web - i.giannadaki@ucl.ac.uk

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