Compilations and Excerpt Collections of Historiographical Material in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Ghent University, March 24–25, 2016
Compilations and excerpt collections are a common genre in late antique and medieval literature. Practices of excerpting have often been situated in the context of tenth-century ‘encyclopaedism’ (P. Lemerle, A. Dain), but that image may be misleading. The practice of gathering and excerpting starts much earlier than the 10th century and ‘encyclopaedism’ is a modern term that may distort our understanding of ‘culture of sylloge’ (P. Odorico). For a long time, compilations and collections only received attention as sources for the works they rely on and not as works of literature in their own right. Recently, scholars have suggested to take them seriously as a literary phenomenon and study them as texts in their own right.
The conference will focus primarily on the study of historiographical collections and compilations produced between Late Antiquity and the twelfth century, composed in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Armenian, Arabic, and other languages.
Registration required.