The next session on the Mediterranean Institute Seminar series is titled 'Aeneas in the Mediterranean: from Troy to Genoa'. The Seminar will be delivered by Dr Filomena Giannotti from the University of Siena.
The session will be held on Thursday 16 May at 17:30 at the Mediterranean Institute, Ħursun Farmhouse, University of Malta Msida Campus.
The session will be held on Thursday 16 May at 17:30 at the Mediterranean Institute, Ħursun Farmhouse, University of Malta Msida Campus.
Virgil’s Aeneid is the most international of ancient poems, with a plot that spans three continents and embraces ethnic groups and nations from all around the Mediterranean. If the wanderings of Trojan heroes have often been perceived as ‘protocolonial narratives’, today the Aeneid can be re-read in a ‘post-colonial’ theatre. Through this new perspective, Dr Giannotti has tried to couple the most important stops Aeneas makes in the Mediterranean with as many rewritings by contemporary Italian poets, ranging from the celebrated Giuseppe Ungaretti and Attilio Bertolucci to the living writers Valerio Magrelli and Tiziano Rossi. The focus of attention during the Mediterranean Institute Seminar session is on the writer Giorgio Caproni: in his poem 'The Passage of Aeneas' and in many lesser known pieces of prose, Caproni describes a statue of Aeneas he encountered at the end of the Second World War, in the heavily bombed Piazza Bandiera, in Genoa, and explains how that statue led him to consider Aeneas as a symbol of modern mankind, suspended between the past and future, and without a home. Of course, Virgil’s Aeneas did not arrive in Genoa, but Giorgio Caproni, a native of Genoa, chooses to imagine this poetic ‘meeting’ with Aeneas in his hometown.
Dr Filomena Giannotti graduated in Classics and completed her PhD in Reception Studies and Classical Tradition from the University in Siena. From 2002 to 2018 she was Teaching Fellow in Latin at the University of Siena, and since September 2018 she is Research Fellow in Latin Literature and Language at the University of Siena. Her areas of research interest and research publications centre around Virgil’s Aeneid, Late Antiquity, Reception Studies and classical tradition in contemporary literature.
The Seminar is free and open to the public, and students are particularly encouraged to attend.
Attendees are cordially invited to a drinks reception after the Seminar session.
For further information or to reserve a place contact the MI Seminar Convenor Dr Norbert Bugeja by email