Descrizione del progetto
Un nuovo studio sull’antica Roma mette insieme il «fare» e il «significare»
La fabbricazione degli oggetti nell’antica Roma è un argomento affascinante, ma di solito viene studiato come un processo pratico o tecnico. Le conoscenze relative agli aspetti culturali, estetici e morali sono scarse. Il progetto FACERE, finanziato dal CER, indagherà sul significato del concetto di fabbricazione per gli abitanti dell’Impero romano. In particolare, analizzerà le opere dei romani sull’argomento: testi letterari (poesia e prosa in greco e latino) e opere d’arte visiva, come dipinti, rilievi e mosaici, che rappresentano processi di fabbricazione e possono rivelarci quali fossero i pensieri, i sentimenti e i discorsi dei romani nei loro riguardi. FACERE esaminerà inoltre l’impatto della cultura materiale sugli spettatori romani, le modalità di realizzazione degli oggetti e la loro rappresentazione o immaginazione.
Obiettivo
How did the ancient Romans respond to the material world around them? This project, FACERE, proposes a new way of approaching this question. It studies ‘making’ – the processes by which the objects and buildings which surrounded Romans in their daily lives were produced. How things were made in ancient Rome is usually studied as a practical or technical process. However, making also has a wide range of culturally specific aesthetic and moral implications. FACERE breaks new ground by asking not how making was done, but what making meant to the inhabitants of the Roman empire. To answer this question, we analyse the Roman discourse of making: literary texts – poetry and prose in Greek and Latin – and visual art works, such as paintings, reliefs, and mosaics, which represent processes of making and can tell us how Romans thought, felt, and spoke about them. FACERE aims to achieve two key objectives.
First, we will write a new cultural history of ‘Roman making’, adding to our understanding of the technological, logistic, and economic dimensions the crucial new dimension of the cultural values involved in making, in particular its aesthetic and moral complexities. How did making relate to Roman notions about the environment? How did Roman writers and artists depict the ability and agency of different kinds of makers, and how does this relate to their gender, ethnicity, and social status? Were certain ways of making considered superior to others, and why?
Second, FACERE proposes a new way of investigating the impact of material culture on Roman viewers. How things were made, and how their stories of making were presented or imagined, was deeply relevant to what they meant to their ancient viewers, owners, and users. FACERE introduces the innovative analytical concept of ‘madeness’, which allows us to bring ‘making’ and ‘meaning’ together.
Campo scientifico
Programma(i)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
HORIZON-AG - HORIZON Action Grant Budget-BasedIstituzione ospitante
9712CP Groningen
Paesi Bassi