Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Faculty of Language, Literature and Humanities - Department of Classics, HU Berlin

Previous work on characters and types has focused on the relationship between individuality and typification, the social backdrop of premodern characters, and specific genres and their traditions (e.g. characters in comedy; the ancient novel; the Arthurian tradition; Chaucer’s General Prologue). Our conference, in contrast, adopts a decidedly theoretical perspective. In order to approach typification
and character/character depiction from a more comprehensive and comparative angle, we consider both ancient and medieval material, which allows for tracing traditions and developments as well as identifying differences and changes regarding typified characters in different genres (drama, ›fictional‹ narrative, historiography, fable, hagiography, collections of exempla, fabliau, Schwank etc.). In order to enable a cross-genre perspective, we consider not only characters traditionally seen as types but also
exemplary or allegorical characters. These characters are low in individuality as well. Exemplary characters, however, are decidedly not stereotypical. We want to foster the interdisciplinary exchange between the philologies by opening up new avenues for researching character and type in premodern literatures.

Organisation:
Prof. Dr. Eva von Contzen and Prof. Dr. Lisa Cordes

Programm

Programm of Panel Discussion "Typen auf der Bühne" mit Theaterschaffenden

Die Junge Akademie | Mainz ist das Nachwuchsförderungsformat der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur | Mainz: Exzellente promovierte Forschende und Literatur- sowie Musikschaffende werden in Anerkennung ihrer bisherigen herausragenden wissenschaftlichen und künstlerischen Leistungen für die Dauer von vier Jahren in die Junge Akademie aufgenommen und bei der Weiterverfolgung ihrer Laufbahn sowie bei der Erweiterung ihres Netzwerkes im Zeichen der Interdisziplinarität unterstützt.