As writers like Dares, Dictys, Benoît de SainteMaure, Guido delle Colonne, Giovanni Boccaccio, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare and as scribes, illustrators, and printers translate, adapt, illuminate, and transform the Troy story—in different languages, genres, media—the reception history of Troy becomes, amongst other things, a history of touch. The Troy story serves as an imaginative site where cultural and literary relations are structured by contiguity, proximity, and materiality, as readers and audiences attempt to get in touch with Troy. Touch is understood here as an affective and transformational epistemological category, as a way of knowing, of apprehending, of understanding entities, but also as one of forming new relations, of producing new knowledge, of generating innovation and of expressing a desire for bridging the gap between past and present.

“Touching Troy” aims to explore this tactile dimension of—and within—the Troy story and its medieval and early modern transmission, to study how Troy touches medieval and early modern subjects—and how medieval and early modern subjects touch Troy: How do experiences of material objects, tactile or otherwise, as well as visual and narrative representations of such experiences structure relations between texts, artifacts, and audiences? What kind of affective responses are generated by way of touch? How do tactile experiences and representations of tactile experiences unfold across time, that is, within and across different temporalities, different periods? 

Programm:

Thursday, August 25, 2022

14:00-14:15	Opening Remarks Bernhard Huß, Speaker Research Group 2305 (Freie Universität Berlin)
14:15-14:30	Introduction Andrew James Johnston (Freie Universität Berlin), Wolfram Keller (Freie Universität Berlin), Henry Ravenhall (University of Cambridge)
14:30-15:30	Witness to the Trojan War: The Material Agency of Dares and Dictys Marilynn R. Desmond (Binghamton University)
16:00-17:00	Touching the Ruins of Troy: Where the Past becomes Present Rosa M. Rodríguez Porto (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela)
17:00-18:00	On Nearly Touching Troy—Achilles and Franks Casket Andrew James Johnston (Freie Universität Berlin)

Friday, August 26, 2022

10:00-11:00	Touch and the Materiality of the Roman de Troie Henry Ravenhall (University of Cambridge)
11:00-12:00	Touching Texts: Troy Stories in Later Medieval Manuscripts Venetia Bridges (Durham University)
14:00-15:00	Trojan Nobodies: Uncarnal Knowledge in Troilus and Criseyde Timothy Arner (Grinnell College)
15:00-16:00	‘Re-Making’ Hector in John Lydgate’s Troy Book Wolfram Keller (Freie Universität Berlin)
16:30-17:30	Get in Touch with Troy in 15th-Century France: The first Mise en Prose of Benoît de Sainte-Maure’s Roman de Troie in Some of Its French Manuscripts Anne Rochebouet (Université de Versailles SaintQuentin-en-Yvelines)
1730-18:30	The Hand that Touched Troy: Using Maniculae in Latin and French Manuscripts Florence Tanniou (Université Paris-Nanterre)

Saturday, August 27, 2022

10:00-11:00	Aeneas at the Temple of Juno: Marlowe, Surrey, and Shakespeare Heather James (University of Southern California)
11:00-12:00	Touching the Shield of Achilles: Ekphrasis and/as Re-Mediation Lauren Shohet (Villanova University)