INVITATION:

“Funded by the European Union – Next Generation EU“

Orality and storytelling
From Homer to the traditions of Sicily: orbi, cunto, pupi

22-23 March 2024

Palazzo Pupillo, Ortigia, Syracuse

and on Teams platform

22 march 2024	23 march 2024

The oral storytelling traditions still alive and practised in Sicily offer valuable ethnographic data for a better understanding of traditional storytelling methods and practices; they also lend themselves to being investigated in comparison with the Greek epic traditions of the archaic and classical era and offer comparative material that is potentially very useful in better defining certain relevant issues from the perspective of historical reconstruction (techniques and methods of performance, horizontal and vertical transmission, improvisation, formularity, variation, etc.).

The cunto, the “acted tale” of the puppets, the tradition of the orbi singing – just to mention the best known traditional Sicilian storytelling and playtelling practices -, still little known and little exploited in studies on orality related to the ancient world, lend themselves to become a touchstone for reasoning specifically on the Homeric poems and, more generally, on the practices of “traditional storytelling” in archaic and classical Greece, dominated by a system of communication with a prevalent oral nature.

What the two days of study are intended to offer is the possibility of a direct confrontation between anthropologists, ethnographers, historians of religions and classical philologists, so that – in a game of mirrors – we can “look at and recognise”, in whole or in part, the forms, modes and functions of the different traditional narratives, all forms of mythos in its original and pregnant meaning.

The enlargement to other storytelling traditions can provide, in Weberian terms, models to be applied to historical reconstruction, in full awareness of the sterility of sectorial closures and the need to broaden the interpretative tools of a “total social fact” such as the archaic Greek epic.

ORGANISED BY
CNR-ISMed
UniKORE – University of Enna
DSU-UnivAQ – University of L’Aquila, Department of Human Sciences
DAAM – UniOr – University of Naples L’Orientale, Department of Asia, Africa and the Mediterranean

SPONSORED BY
Ignazio Buttitta Foundation
Theatrical Universes

“Funded by the European Union – Next Generation EU“.
PRIN 2022 (DUS.PN025.001 20222NFMAH_SH5_PRIN2022)

SCIENTIFIC ORGANISATION/DESIGN AND COORDINATION
A. Ercolani (CNR-ISMed), S. Macrì (University of Enna Unikore), A. Piergrossi (CNR-ISPC)

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Ignazio E. Buttitta (University of Palermo), Andrea Ercolani (Institute of Mediterranean Studies of the National Research Council CNR-ISMed), Manuela Giordano (University of Siena), Laura Lulli (University of L’Aquila) Sonia Macrì (University of Enna ‘Kore’), Riccardo Palmisciano (University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’), Alessandra Piergrossi (Institute of Cultural Heritage Sciences of the National Research Council CNR-ISPC), Livio Sbardella (University of L’Aquila)

CONTACTS
sonia.macri@unikore.it
alessandra.piegrossi@cnr.it