Greek and Roman Hymnic Poetry traditions

Long neglected as a poor relation of flashier modes such as epic and drama, the genre of hymns in Greek and Latin literature has in recent years begun to draw the attention of researchers exploring how religion, politics, and poetry interacted in the ancient world. It has become increasingly clear that praising the gods (and elevated mortals) is fraught with meaning and power, in societies where verbal performance and the manipulation of symbols were objects of constant practice. The turn toward "cultural poetics" and ethnographic comparison within Classical studies has proceeded along very different lines in the American and French academic worlds, however. This symposium, enabled by the France-Stanford Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, brings together scholars with varied perspectives to investigate the full range of hymnic literature.