Project description
The project plans to carry out a systematic analysis of the forms of interaction between text and image in Latin culture and its reception, in a long-term perspective that ranges from Antiquity to the 20th c. Other than being particularly relevant and innovative in the field of classical studies, the project will make it possible to promote and enhance the cultural, textual, and material heritage of Rome through study, cataloguing, digitisation, and dissemination initiatives, in accordance with the aims of the first mission of PNRR, the Horizon Europe 2021-27 Programme, and the PNR 2021-27.
The theme of the project will be declined along three lines of research:
From images to texts (LoR1)
Texts for images (LoR2)
From texts to images (LoR3)
which are complementary to each other and closely interrelated from a chronological and methodological point of view.
In LoR1, the tools offered by intermediality and transmediality studies will be innovatively applied to Latin antiquity, with the aim of developing and testing new methodologies to reconstruct lost literary texts from iconographic sources, as well as of providing a comparative analysis of the strategies of visualisation which characterise Roman literature through sample investigations of its rhetorical and poetic production. In LoR2, we will systematically investigate the forms of interaction between the visual and the written dimension in the two textual typologies that most imply a relationship between text, image and monument, i.e. (literary and inscriptional) epigrams and epigraphs, from Martial to Late Antiquity. Finally, in LoR3 we will examine the iconographic reception of Latin authors, from Medieval illuminated manuscripts to contemporary artists' books, focusing on some exemplary genres and authors (Terence, Livy, the didactic genre, Apuleius), to verify how the visual tension that permeates Latin literature has been reinterpreted by artists and illustrators.
Our research group will promote collaboration between philology, archaeology, and epigraphy, adopting an interdisciplinary and intermedial approach. For this reason, the project will not only foster a significant advancement in the knowledge of the interactions between Latin texts and the visual dimension, resulting in new editions, commentaries, and other specialised publications, but will also promote the knowledge of Rome's cultural heritage among a wider public and in particular among the new generations, through various dissemination initiatives which will be also carried out via the web. In accordance with the guidelines of the PNRR and PND, the digital dimension will be crucial for our project: studies and research will be integrated with digitisation initiatives that will make it possible to enhance the cultural heritage of (manuscript and printed) books through databases and digital exhibitions.
Research Units:
University of Padova – Principal Investigator: Francesco Lubian
University of Bari – Associate Investigator: Antonio Stramaglia
University of Bologna – Associate Investigator: Daniele Pellacani
University of Genova – Associate Investigator: Biagio Santorelli
University of Roma “La Sapienza” – Associate Investigator: Andrea Cucchiarelli