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The Erotics of Narrative

A KYKNOS colloquium at the Gregynog Conference Centre, 15th - 17th July 2009

Theme
Desire, anticipation, pleasure, and satisfaction are all concepts which apply to hearing, reading, and giving narratives, as well as to love and sex. In some cases, horror, boredom, pain, and frustration are involved instead, or even as well. When a narrative concerns love and/or sex, then there is the possibility of dynamic interplay between the contents of the narrative and its narration, and between the provocations and reactions of narrators and their narratees.

This conference aims to explore the ways in which ideas and theories surrounding ancient narratives and erotic subject matter interrelate and affect each other, addressing such questions as: How do narrators understand and treat love and sex, and what can this tell us about them and their narrative? What do narrators focus on or avoid, and how much of an impact does the (presence/age/gender etc. of the) narratee(s) have? How are the processes and rhythms of reading/listening related to sexual desire, pleasure, and so on? To what extent are questions of genre important for understanding the erotics of narrative? How do narrators use, and/or narratees understand, metaphors, similes, and ambiguous or multi-dimensional terminology and language in describing love and its effects, and what factors determine their usage? How do aspects such as guilt, shame, voyeurism, censorship, explicitness, knowing allusions, revelation, and concealment relate to and complicate narration? Can ideas of deviance, fetishism, compliance, force, teasing, and transaction be usefully applied to narrative? To what extent are activity and passivity important in narration? How do narratives reflect, question, and/or subvert sexual and erotic norms and theories?

Venue and Travel Information
This conference will take place at the University of Wales Conference Centre at Gregynog Hall, a historic and beautiful country-house in peaceful rural Wales. For information on Gregynog please visit the Gregynog website at www.wales.ac.uk/gregynog/

Publication
We aim to repeat the success of the 2007 KYKNOS conference ‘Lies and Metafiction in Ancient Narrative’, which was also held at Gregynog. An edited volume based on the 2007 conference will be published in 2009 in the Ancient Narrative Supplementum series, and we aim to publish an edited volume based on this conference.

Programme
Wednesday 15 July

  • 3.00 – 3.15 Introduction
  • 3.15 – 4.15 Dimos Spatharas ‘Kinky stories from the rostrum’
  • 4.15 – 4.45 Tea
  • 4.45 – 5.45 Andrea Capra ‘Erotic scenes, erratic narratives, ironic distances: Plato and Xenophon’s Antithetic Symposia’
  • 5.45 – 6.45 Liz Pender ‘From seduction meadow to marriage bed: reading Plato’s Phaedrus’
  • DINNER

Thursday 16 July

  • 9.00 – 10.00 Glenn Lacki ‘Sex and sea: the temptations of narration (Ov. Her. 18-19)
  • 10.00 – 11.00 Alison Sharrock ‘The erotics of delay in Ovidian narrative’
  • 11.00 – 11.30 Coffee
  • 11.30 – 12.30 Anne Cotton ‘Reading, learning and desire: narrative, frustration, and philosophical progress in Plato’s Phaedrus’
  • 12.30 – 2.00 Lunch
  • 2.00 – 3.00 Tim Whitmarsh ‘The erotics of disappointment: Chariton’s Dionysiaka’
  • 3.00 – 4.00 Kathryn Chew ‘Erotikoi logoi and sophrosune: [self-] control in Achilles Tatius, Longus, and Heliodorus’
  • 4.00 – 4.30 Tea
  • 4.30 – 5.30 Danny Praet ‘Deviance and desire: inverted eroticism in the later Acta and Passiones’
  • 5.30 – 6.30 Froma Zeitlin ‘The Circulation of Erotic Energy in Achilles Tatius: Narrative Strategies of Deflection, Projection, and Sublimation’
  • DINNER

Friday 17 July

  • 9.00 – 9.30 Daniel King ‘A survivor’s story: narrating painful experiences in a pleasing way’
  • 9.30 – 10.00 Emilio Capettini ‘Ethiopian Andromache: philandria and eros’
  • 10.00 – 11.00 Stelios Panayotakis ‘Desire and Storytelling in Apollonius of Tyre’
  • 11.00 – 11.30 Coffee
  • 11.30 – 12.30 Ruth Webb ‘Adultery, mime, and the novel: performance and metafiction in Apuleius and Achilles Tatius’
  • 12.30 – 2.00 Lunch
  • 2.00 – 3.00 Jane McLarty ‘Misplaced jealousy and the privileged reader: a Christian reading of a romantic motif’

Booking
For a booking form and payment details please visit the University of Wales Lampeter Research Insitute of Classics .

Contacts
Queries should be addressed to, preferably, all of the conference organisers:
John Morgan John.Morgan@swansea.ac.uk
Mirjam Plantinga m.plantinga@lamp.ac.uk
Ian Repath i.repath@swansea.ac.uk