PhD "New Ages: Anchoring Innovation in Roman Imperial Panegyric" (Univ. Groningen)

PhD "New Ages: Anchoring Innovation in Roman Imperial Panegyric" (Univ. Groningen)

Arbeitgeber
University of Groningen
Ort
Groningen
Land
Netherlands
Vom - Bis
01.09.2020 -
Bewerbungsschluss
20.04.2020
Von
OIKOS Anchoring Innovation, Prof. Dr R. Nauta, Dr J.W. Drijvers, Dr B. Reitz-Joosse

New ideas and inventions that affect social life cannot thrive unless they are somehow embedded in the society for which they are intended. Innovation will always be connected somehow—both in the ways it is communicated and perceived, and in terms of content—to what people know, believe, want, value, and can understand. This is true even of radical, path-breaking, ‘revolutionary’ ideas and insights. This phenomenon of ‘anchoring’ is central to the new research agenda of the Dutch classicists. One area in which ‘anchoring’ is studied in our program is its appearance in literature and the arts.
In this respect, a fascinating phenomenon is the trope of the ‘New Age’, in particular in panegyrical texts for Roman emperors. Although emperors needed to present themselves as firmly rooted in Roman traditions, they also needed to surpass their predecessors and claim that their own reign inaugurated a period of unprecedented flourishing. This emphasis on discontinuity was even greater after a period of crisis, and especially when a new dynasty had come to power. In such cases, the new age brought about a break with the immediate past, but it could still be anchored in a remoter past (real or imagined), to which it was presented as returning. The repetition of this process from emperor to emperor unfolded its own dynamics: thus, whereas the reign of Augustus was described as the return of the mythological Golden Age, a number of later emperors anchored their rule in those of predecessors. Such messages of return and renewal could be encoded in a variety of media, but a central role was played by literary texts written to praise the emperor, in poetry as well as prose. It is on such panegyrical texts that this project will focus.
We invite structured PhD proposals (title, research question, scholarly background, aims, method, corpus) with ideas on how to approach the discourse of the ‘New Age’ trope, anchoring and related themes in panegyrical texts from the Roman Empire, including the late empire. A specific focus or your own framing of the question are welcome. We also suggest that you contact Jan Willem Drijvers (j.w.drijvers@rug.nl) at an early stage of designing your own project in this area for feedback and help.
More information about the Anchoring Innovation research agenda of OIKOS can be found on the OIKOS website (http://www.ru.nl/oikos/anchoring-innovation), including an article by Ineke Sluiter, entitled “Anchoring Innovation: a Classical Research Agenda”.

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