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Lucy Nicholas
Dr Lucy Rachel Nicholas is Lecturer in Latin and Greek Language and Culture at the Warburg Institute. She is interested in projects which bridge the fields of Neo-Latin/Greek, the Renaissance and Reformation history, biblical scholarship, and in ancient authors, particularly Cicero, Ovid, Virgil and Prudentius. Her doctoral thesis centred on the Latin writings of the classical scholar, Roger Ascham. Following the publication of Roger Ascham’s ‘A Defence of the Lord’s Supper’: Latin Text and English Translation (Brill) in 2017, her translation and edition of Ascham's Themata Theologica came out last year (Bloomsbury, 2023). She has also co-edited a volume on Roger Ascham for Brill (2022) and contributed to a volume on The Cambridge Connection (eds. McDiarmid and Wabuda). She has co-edited three Neo-Latin anthologies on (i) Britain, (ii) Europe and (iii) British Universities for the new Bloomsbury Neo-Latin book series. She has recently contributed to a new book on Baroque Latinity (eds. Glomski, Manuwald and Taylor) and her chapter on Thomas More's Latin Utopias is now in print in the Oxford Handbook of Thomas More's Utopia (eds, Shrank and Withington). An article on Neo-Greek code-switching will appear in a special edition of JOLCEL this year. The Latin works of the English humanist, Walter Haddon, represent the focus of her current research. She is the Latin Editor on the Thomas Nashe project and the Vice President of the Society for Neo-Latin Studies.
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contextualizing the phenomenon within (a) the modern theoretical frameworks on ambiguity, (b) the pre-Ovidian history of ambiguity in classical times, and (c) the broader
contemporary climate of the Augustan Principate. The term “ambiguity” is itself probed, and a definition that encompasses philological, narratological and thematic dimensions is
postulated. The article then interrogates the hypothesis of a unifying ambiguity with reference to texts across the entire Ovidian corpus, from his earliest to his last. Various
kinds and levels of ambiguity are identified (including those established in the rhetorical tradition), carefully differentiated, and further explored using the structuring categories of
gender, religion, art, genre and myth. Demonstration of Ovid’s ambiguity then gives way to a final review of the reasons for such ambiguity. In particular, a socio-political explanation is
advanced, the cultural dynamics of the age of Augustus being, as this article argues, paramount to an Ovidian aesthetic of ambiguity.
contextualizing the phenomenon within (a) the modern theoretical frameworks on ambiguity, (b) the pre-Ovidian history of ambiguity in classical times, and (c) the broader
contemporary climate of the Augustan Principate. The term “ambiguity” is itself probed, and a definition that encompasses philological, narratological and thematic dimensions is
postulated. The article then interrogates the hypothesis of a unifying ambiguity with reference to texts across the entire Ovidian corpus, from his earliest to his last. Various
kinds and levels of ambiguity are identified (including those established in the rhetorical tradition), carefully differentiated, and further explored using the structuring categories of
gender, religion, art, genre and myth. Demonstration of Ovid’s ambiguity then gives way to a final review of the reasons for such ambiguity. In particular, a socio-political explanation is
advanced, the cultural dynamics of the age of Augustus being, as this article argues, paramount to an Ovidian aesthetic of ambiguity.
This conference explores how the literature and ideas of the classical world calibrated early modern Christianity—its interpretation, ordinances, moral instruction, politics, theology, cultural expression, and polarizing impulses of confessionalisation. How did classical learning fill the gaps in the Lutheran rejection of Catholic doctrine? How did classical poetry and drama shape the Roman Church’s popular outreach after the Council of Trent? How did classical history and rhetoric inflect the turbulent politics of the Reformation? Looking beyond the Christian absorption of pagan material and Erasmian humanism redux, this conference focuses instead on a classical Christianity, even a Greco-Roman monotheism, in the generations after Erasmus. Where recent scholarship has replaced confessionalism at the heart of early modern philology, we aim to replace classicism at the heart of theology and religious politics. The classical tradition was too ubiquitous and authoritative a presence in early modern intellectual life to have left theology untouched.
We welcome any proposals that engage with these themes. Proposals may relate to any aspects of this phenomenon across Europe, and case-studies may feature the vernacular or the languages of Latin, Greek, or Hebrew. We warmly welcome papers on scholarly as well as popular literature, Protestant as well as Catholic communities, and those that engage with the religious politics of the Reformation more generally. Abstracts of no more than 250 words, and any queries, should be sent to classicalreformations21@gmail.com by 16 April 2021. We hope to publish a volume of essays following the conference.
Convenors: Dr Micha Lazarus (The Warburg Institute) and Dr Lucy Nicholas (The Warburg Institute)