Upcoming talk at UC Davis on the reception of the Protrepticus

Next Saturday I will be giving a talk at the 2013 Receptions Studies conference at UC Davis-- Receptions: Reading the Past across Time and Space. About the conference:

In keeping with the National Endowment for the Humanities’ new call for interdisciplinary transcultural projects, this conference will focus on “intercultural receptions” across time and space. Reading, in the title, is broadly conceived in the sense of reception of “cultural” forms and genres, including texts, buildings, art works, rituals, and performances. This year’s conference will particularly focus on the reception of ancient, medieval, and early modern texts, whether literary or philosophical, across genres, periods, and geographical spaces.

Here is the abstract for my own paper:

Reception and Reconstruction: The Case of Aristotle’s Protrepticus-- Monte Johnson

Aristotle’s Protrepticus (Exhortation to Philosophy) was one of the most famous books in antiquity, but it was not copied in the middle ages and so is now a lost work. But because of the way the book was received and used by later scholars (e.g. imitated in other philosophical works, excerpted in anthologies, and integrated into pedagogical syllabi), it can be substantially reconstructed. The result is precious insight into Aristotle’s contribution to the genre of prose dialogue.

I will be on a panel with Jan Szaif (UC Davis), speaking on "Meeting the Stoic Challenge: The Reception of the Aristotelian ‘Formula’ of Living Well in the Context of Late Hellenistic Philosophizing", and Michael Griffin (UBC), speaking on "Now we must consider that some of the ancients discovered the truth”: Reception and antiquity in ancient Neoplatonism". Click here for their abstracts, and the others at the conference-- we are panel number 6, from 4:30-6pm on September 28.