Ancient Fable in Byzantium: Text, Context, and Audience of Ignatios the Deacon
Federica’s research concerns the concept of Ancient Fable in Byzantium. In preparing a new critical edition of the dodecasyllable works of Ignatios the Deacon, she is addressing the problem of the audience and the context of Ignatios’ poetical works. In particular, the Tetrasticha iambica (i.e., tetrastich fables written by Ignatios and based on Babrian and Aesopic traditions) will be the focus of her interests, in terms of their purposes and re-use as moral and school texts. More broadly, her research will tackle the traditional idea of scholastic audience for Ignatios’ animal anecdotes, aiming rather at a broader audience interested in the ethical values within (and beyond) fables. Starting from the clear evidence offered by the manuscript tradition of Ignatios’ tetrastichs, his fables in verse had widespread transmission, selected and organized according to their moral epimythia. The research will focus on defining the socio-cultural context of Ignatios’ literary activity and the audience he envisioned for his fables in verse.
Professional Biography
Federica Scognamiglio is a PhD candidate in Classics at Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. She holds a BA in Classics and an MA in Philology, Literature, and Classic Culture both from University of Naples “Federico II”. She has been Gastforscherin from March to June 2022 at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften – Institut für Mittelalterforschung, Abteilung für Byzanzforschung) in Vienna. Trained as a classical scholar, she moved to Byzantine philology, and is currently working on a new critical edition of some dodecasyllable poems by Ignatios the Deacon (9th century). Her main research interests are Late Antique and Byzantine Poetry, Arabic Wisdom and Luqman the Wise, and History of Classical Scholarship. She has published several contributions in international volumes and leading journals on the topics of her interest, mainly on Byzantine Poetry, also dealing with hitherto unpublished Byzantine poems in dodecasyllables.