Collaborations with Antiquity: Medieval and Early Modern
Workshop, 6-7 May 2026
Room S4, Swallowgate, School of Classics, University of St Andrews
Teleological accounts of national literary histories valorise the ‘conquest’ of the vernacular and celebrate great individual ‘overreachers’. This workshop instead investigates the ways culture, languages, people and ideas continue to work together with and through antiquity in medieval and early modern Europe. This workshop brings together scholars in Early Modern Studies, Modern Languages, History and Classics. It aims to move beyond established approaches (‘quotation studies’, ‘classical reception’, ‘individual authorship’, ‘allusion and intertextuality’ ) to explore complex stories of collaboration with antiquity. We hope that this inter-disciplinary approach will create new ways of understanding the cultures, intellectual histories, and creative literature and material culture of medieval and early modern Europe.
This workshop is the annual event of the St Andrews Centre for the Receptions of Antiquity (SACRA). We are grateful to The School of Classics and SACRA for their financial support.
Registration
This workshop is an in-person event. Attendance is free, but you must register to attend by emailing [email protected] by 29 April 2026.
Programme
Wednesday, 6 May
9.15am Arrival, welcoming remarks (Emma Buckley)
9.30-11.00am Sophie Schoess “The Unwitting Collaborator: Authorship and Authority in the Ovide Moralisé”
Claudia Rossignoli: “Dialoguing in the garden: classical philosophy for early modern women”
11-11.30am Break
11.30am-1. 00pm Valerie Grünzel: “The reception of the Alexander romance in premodern Scotland”
Philip Hardie: “Abraham Cowley between languages”
1-2.30pm LUNCH
2.30-4pm Luke Houghton: “Virgilian Commentary and Renaissance Art: Interpretative Choices”
Emma Herdman: “Duobus pariter euntibus: emblematic collaboration in sixteenth-century France”
4-4.30pm Break
4.30-5.15pm Stephen Hinds: “Notes from young Milton’s Latin verse lab”
5.30-6.30pm Reception
Thursday, 7 May
9.15-11am Sophie Lemburg: “Exploring the Medieval Amazon – Examining Penthesilea and Thomyris in Medieval Literature”
Syrithe Pugh: “Translation and Impersonation: The Riddle of Virgil’s Gnat”
11-11.30am Break
11.30am-12.15pm Emma Buckley: “Patching Phaedra: collaborations with Seneca in neo-Latin drama”
12.15-12.30pm Concluding remarks (Emma Buckley)