A female Latin poet &  legacy in the middle ages: Hrotsvit of Gandersheim

SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies

Join us on Friday, October 2nd for a talk by the 2026 CAC-SCEC Western Tour Speaker, Dr Cillian O’Hogan!

W.A.C. Bennett Library, SFU Burnaby

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University is pleased to present the 2026 CAC-SCEC Western Tour Speaker, <a href="https://www.medieval.utoronto.ca/people/directories/all-faculty/cillian-ohogan" title="https://www.medieval.utoronto.ca/people/directories/all-faculty/cillian-ohogan" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Dr. Cillian O'Hogan</a>, University of Toronto!Join us Friday, October 2nd at 2:30pm in person at the Bennett Library, SFU Burnaby, Room 7200, or online (<a href="https:// https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83452670034" title="https:// https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83452670034" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83452670034</a>), for his talk “A female Latin poet and the classical legacy in the middle ages: the remarkable poetry of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim”. This talk will be moderated by <a href="https://www.sfu.ca/hellenic-studies/humans/people/s-higgins.html" title="https://www.sfu.ca/hellenic-studies/humans/people/s-higgins.html" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Dr. Sabrina Higgins</a>, Director of the SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies.Attendance is free. The event is open to the public and will be webcast but not recorded.This programming is made possible thanks to the generous support of the <a href="https://trk2.cp20.com/click/ds9u-30aiqm-3bgbbp-cocw1z88/" title="https://trk2.cp20.com/click/ds9u-30aiqm-3bgbbp-cocw1z88/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Stavros Niarchos Foundation</a> (SNF).

AbstractThe tenth-century nun Hrotsvit of Gandersheim is well-known to historians of drama and scholars of medieval literature, but she is seldom read by classicists. This is a shame, since in addition to being one of the most accomplished and important Latin writers of the Middle Ages, she is also an extremely thoughtful and significant interpreter of classical poetry. Modelling her works in turn on Ovid (legendary tales), Terence (dramas), and Virgil (short epics), she takes classical genres and combines them with Christian content, prefacing each work with prefaces in which she speaks openly about her method, her inspiration, and the challenges she faced while writing. In this paper, I introduce Hrotsvit's fascinating poetry, and situate her in the context of female intellectual culture in the Ottonian age, which reveals much greater engagement with the classical past on the part of women readers and writers than might be assumed.

Speaker BiographyI grew up in Dublin and studied Classics at Trinity College, Dublin. After a PhD on the later Latin poet Prudentius at Toronto I was employed successively as a Hellenist at the University of Waterloo, a Byzantinist at the British Library, and a classical Latinist at the University of British Columbia. In 2018, I came back to Toronto as a medieval Latinist. In other words, I'm a generalist with pretty wide-ranging interests in all things Latin and Greek (as well as Irish).

A female Latin poet & legacy in the middle ages: Hrotsvit of Gandersheim

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A female Latin poet & legacy in the middle ages: Hrotsvit of Gandersheim

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