ETYGR 2018

September 27-29, 2018, Cinéma de Beaulieu-sur-mer (27) et Maison du Séminaire, Nice (28-29), France

Important dates: 

  • October 30, 2017: abstract submission deadline
  • December 05, 2017: Notification of paper acceptance
  • September 27-29, 2018: Conference date

Contact

zucker@unice.fr

assoc.etygram@gmail.com

Dates and Submission

The organizers welcome proposals (in French, English, Greek, German, Spanish or Italian.) in ancient and medieval Greek texts. Conference papers will be 30 minutes, with 15 minutes for discussion. Interested scholars from all academic levels are invited to send an abstract of no more than 500 words to zucker@unice.fr and Richard.FAURE@unice.fr by October 30, 2017. Participants will be notified in early December, 2017. Accepted papers will be presented on an equal footing with invited speakers.

Organisation

Programme committee:

  • Simone Beta (Univ. Siena, Italy)
  • Michèle Biraud (Univ. Nice, France)
  • Maria Chriti (Centre for the Greek Language, Thessaloniki, Greece)
  • Christophe Cusset (Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France)
  • Pierre Destrée (UCLouvain, Belgium)
  • Richard Faure (Univ. Nice, France)
  • Claire Le Feuvre (Université Paris Sorbonne, France)
  • Oliver Hellmann (Univ. Trier, Germany)
  • Glenn W. Most (Scuola Normale di Pisa, Italy. University of Chicago, USA)
  • Koen Vanhaegendoren (Univ. Liège, Belgium)
  • Arnaud Zucker (Univ. Nice, France)

Programme :

Thursday, September 27 (Beaulieu-sur-mer)

  • 14h-17h. Egascol event
  • Concert by Musiques présentes (Greek program)

Programme-concert-Beaulieu

Friday, September 28 (Le Saint-Paul, Nice)

  • 9:00: Welcome & introduction (A. Zucker & R. Faure)
  • 9:30. D. Sedley (invited speaker).  Etymology in Plato’s Sophist’
    • 10:20-10:40. Coffee break
  • 10:40.I. Sluiter. “Anchoring discourses: etymology, genealogy, and the opening riddle of the Cratylus”
  • 11:20. J. Katz. “Cratylan Particularities“
    • 12:00. Lunch
  • 14:00. R.G. Edmonds. “The Song of the Nightingale:  Word Play on the Road to Hades in Plato’s Phaedo“
  • 14:40. R. Hunter & R. Laemmle. “Pulling Apollo apart“
    • 15h20-15h40. Coffee break
  • 15:40. E. Peraki Kyriakou. “The Role of Etymology in the Formation of a Symbol: The Case of Hermes”
  • 16:20. T. Polychronis. “L’étymologie en tant qu’outil d’explication des origines chez Hellanicos de Lesbos”
  • 17:00. N. P. Grintser. “‘True’ and ‘false’ names in Euripides’ Iphigeneia in Aulis“

Saturday, September 29 (Le Saint-Paul, Nice)

  • 9:00. R. Maltby (invited speaker). “The influence of the Greek Stoic tradition on the etymological theory of Varro”
  • 10:00. C. Le Feuvre. “L’étymologie scindée et la hiérarchisation des traits sémantiques“
    • 10:40-11.00. Coffee break
  • 11:00. N. Rousseau. “La place des explications « étymologiques »  dans la lexicographie médicale grecque“
  • 11:40. M. Chriti & E. Tsolakopoulos. “The philosophy of etymology in the Περὶ ἐτυμολογιῶν of Orion of Thebes”
    • 12:20. Lunch
  • 14:20. P. Belenfant. “L’étymologie des épithètes divines dans les Hymnes de Callimaque”
  • 15:00.D. Krausmuller. “Etymology Applied: Patriarch Methodius’ Exegesis of Names of Saints”
    • 15:40-16:00. Coffee break
  • 16:00. J. M. Hudson. “Ridentem dicere verum: the Power of Humor in Plutarch’s (and Varro’s) Etymologies“
  • 16:40. A. Karanika. “Etymologizing Ancient Games: Performance and Theory of Etymology“

Call for paper : 

This international conference, to be held in the Villa Kerylos in September 2018 aims to attract researchers, mainly philologists, linguists and philosophers interested in the ancient practice of etymologizing in Ancient Greek and Byzantine literature. It is promoted by the International Association ETYGRAM (http://www.cepam.cnrs.fr/etygram/) devoted to the study of “emic” ancient Greek etymologies and follows a first edition in 2016 (ETYGR-2016). The ancient Greek conception of etymology is fundamentally different from our modern one and has a much broader meaning. To start with, it allows a rather exceptional plasticity (see, e.g., Plato’s Cratylus) as far as semantic paronomasia is concerned. As ancient scholars understood it, etymology is chiefly a dynamic process aiming at suggesting semantic correlations between words based on phonetic similarities, with a momentous heuristic power. This intellectual game, a very serious one at that, deserves to be investigated since it is neither scientific in character (as modern linguists would describe it), nor labellable as “folk” etymology. It is rather a cultural construction, which is both an art of punning and an attempt to uncover deep semantic motivations. From Homeric epos onwards (see Porph. ad Il. 9.1.160 : Ὁμηρικοῦ ὄντος τοῦ παρετυμολογεῖν), where it appears to be a major concern, a tendency to cluster together words from the same putative root or origin seems to become more and more widespread. Some of this spirit is still present in modern practice, although it receives undeserved discredit. The phonetic proximity of words in a language have an unquestionable effect on the unconscious representation of the world and interconnecting paronymic words has ever had intense attractiveness and heuristic and intellectual interest, either in linguistic theories or in puns or wordplay practices.

The organizers welcome proposals (in French, English, Greek, German, Spanish or Italian.) on ancient and medieval Greek texts. Conference papers will be 30 minutes, with 15 minutes for discussion.  Interested scholars from all academic levels are invited to send an abstract of no more than 500 words to zucker@unice.fr and assoc.etygram@gmail.com by October 30, 2017. Participants will be notified in early December, 2017. Accepted papers will be presented on an equal footing with invited speakers. Accommodation and meals expenses will be covered by the organization.