Prof. Alexander Sens of the Department of Classics will lecture on 'Fat Ladies: Callimachus' Aetia and Hellenistic Poetics.' This talk explores the metaphor of fatness as a literary critical term in the poetry of the early 3rd c. BC. The image has its origins in the late 5th century, but takes on new significance in the work of Callimachus, whose elegiac Aetia ('Causes') opens with a prologue in which the narrator rejects size as a valid esthetic criterion. The opposition between 'large' and 'small' that is set up in this passage is the target of an epigram by Hedylus.
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» This event is limited to Georgetown University students, faculty and staff.
