ИСТИНА

• Охват: Международная
• Даты проведения: 9-11 апреля 2014
• Место проведения: Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
• Все конференции этой группы
• Описание конференции:

  In the ancient, medieval, and renaissance literature, the North was connected to a fantastic ensemble of fictive peoples and creatures. Herodotus, the father of history, defines the Hyperborean, a people living beyond Boreas (the North Wind), as happy and beloved by the gods. As long as these regions remained unexplored, they have been seen as inhabited by such fantastic peoples as well as a fantastic world, while ethnicities as Thracians, Germans and Celts, were used as common denomination for diverse peoples. As a consequence of explorations, diplomatic and cultural contacts as well as the military Roman expansion the mythical boundaries of the North are moved into the Poles' direction. The ancient Hyperborean region for example is assigned to Celts by Ephoros, whereas this fantastic people is relegated in an unknown and fantastic island, situated in the Northern Sea. Compared to the civilized and advanced oikoumene (or middle) the North represented an alter orbis “another world” (variably seen by the Mediterranean cultures), which was different because of the climatic and natural conditions. Especially the northern cold constituted a very important feature, conditioning the body as well the mind of the local peoples, who were imagined to be tall, blond and brave according to the common literary topoi. The North became an important topic also in the scientific discourse. The Hippocratic treatise On winds and waters represents the first transmitted work, in which the geographic and climatic conditions of the North are treated and related to the body and character of the northern people. This work must have influenced the view as well as the (moral) evaluation of the North and its peoples by historians like Poseidonios: the ethnographic discourse received and used the pseudoscientific explanation that the big dimensions of the north peoples are due to the climatic humidity, which caused the increase of the human and animal bodies as well as of the plants. According to this theory, the climatic features of the place are said to be responsible for the cruel customs of the northern populations. Ovid (Tristia 5, 7, 60) said for example: non hominis culpa, sed ista loci (the place and not the man is guilty). We are able to pursuit the continuity of these traditions through the Middle Ages up to the Renaissance. Paolo Giovio (De legatione Basilii Magni Principis Moschoviae, fol. 8) and Olaus Magnus (Historia 2, 11) localised for example the fantastic people of the Pygmies in Scandinavia and in Greenland. This localisation was due to a comparison between the Laplanders and the Pygmies, identified with a modern real northern people in consequence of their description and characterisation by the classical authors. This represents a good example for the reception, adaptation and transformation of a classical tradition in the Renaissance as well as for the formation of a new fantastic image of the North in this époque.

• Добавил в систему: Белоусов Алексей Владиславович

Доклады:

• 2014 Der imaginäre Norden in der literarisch-heroischen Welt des Flavius Philostratus
• Автор: Belousov A.

• 2014 The North in Ancient Greek Folk Mentality: the Example of the Greek paroimiai.
• Автор: Касьянова М.И.