Space, the Environment, and Cognition in Ancient Greek Literature, supported by the Susan Manning Workshop Fund and a conference grant by the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, was organised by Dr Manos Tsakiris (IASH/Edinburgh), and Dr Lilah Grace Canevaro (Edinburgh), and it took place at the Institute on 24 May 2024.
This workshop set out to bring into conversation six scholars from various career stages working on any aspect of space and its depiction and evocation in Greek literature. Classics has already benefitted from a first wave of interest in space, in the aftermath of the ‘spatial turn’ in the humanities, the intellectual movement in the social sciences in the 1970s and 1980s (sparked by a number of scholars and philosophers such as Michel Foucault and his work on heterotopia, Lefebvre on the production of space, Michael Bakhtin on the chronotope, de Certeau on space and place), which reappraised the significance of the surrounding environment for humans and began situating human nature in space. And yet the study of space and the environment continues to fascinate scholars: in recent years, space in Greek literature has been explored via a variety of new methodological and theoretical frameworks, including (but not limited to) ecocriticism, new materialisms, and distributed cognition. It was a variety of approaches informed by such methodologies that this workshop attempted to bring into a fruitful dialogue.
Former IASH Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Michael Carroll (St Andrews) opened the day by giving a paper on metaphors in the tragedies of Aeschylus. Approaching space with a cognitive methodological framework (e.g. image schemata), he explored some of the complexities of the transition between spaces in figurative expression in relationship to actual plot developments. In the second panel, attention turned to Hellenistic poetry. Dr Lilah Grace Canevaro applied tenets of Material Ecocriticism on Theocritean poetry. Drawing on materialist theoretical frameworks, she argued against a hard boundary between humans and things and proposed a diffuse porosity; and drawing on ecocritical frameworks, she put forward a dark-ecological reading which undercuts the idyllic qualities of Theocritus’ Idylls. Dr Manos Tsakiris analysed models of spatial arrangement in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius and demonstrated how a hodological view of the world is inscribed within a cartographic system of spatial arrangement, in a blend that foregrounds the human experience; and how 4e cognition can be used to illuminate aspects of character interactions with the surrounding environments and surfaces.
In the afternoon, the papers offered focused on Greek literature of the Imperial era. Prof. Jason König (St Andrews) explored some of the complexities in relations between humans and their environment(s) as depicted in epic poetry; he demonstrated the significance of substances of the earth in epic poetry more broadly, and in Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica more specifically, analysing a series of passages in which interactions with the earth vary from detachment to immersive engagement. Dr Anna Athanasopoulou (Cambridge) showcased the impressive variety of ways in which space is ‘weirded’ in Lucian’s Icaromenippus, extending from miniaturisation and magnification to pluri-dimensionality, hyper-sensoriality and spatio-temporal compression, revealing Lucian as a master of spatial manipulation. Prof. Andrew Morrison (Glasgow) offered the day’s final paper on space in fictional and pseudepigraphic Greek letter collections; he analysed the significance of the construction of space in letters, which, as objects, move through space and can be perceived as closing the distance between sender and addressee, and the conceptualisation of different locations within letters. He also offered a sample of his work in digitally visualising such spatial complexities.
The wide scope of methodologies used and of the texts discussed (spanning nearly 1,000 years) kindled a most stimulating and lively discussion following each panel. Throughout the day, presenters and attendees discussed the work of their peers, reflected on their own work, and exchanged views on the new directions, beyond fixed disciplinary boundaries, that the study of space in Greek literature can take in the future. It is the belief of the organisers that the workshop has been very successful in building a research network connecting scholars working on space, broadly construed, in Greek literature across a number of Scottish institutions, and it is their hope that this network will remain active and expand further in a future iteration of this workshop.
The organisers would like to extend their gratitude to Dr Ben Fletcher-Watson, Pauline Clark and Lauren Galligan for their assistance with all aspects of this workshop.