From Name to Space, and to Myth :Toponyms, Topographies, Representations, and How Places Become Mythical in the Pre-Modern Mediterranean Space and Beyond (7th–14th centuries)

17 novembre 2023

Mme Cassandre Lejosne, UNIL

This workshop aims to ask a simple yet complex question: how can a (holy) place becomes mythical through the intersection of its name (echoed by pilgrims, travelers, "policymakers", texts, and accounts), its topographical features, and its visual representations? Necessarily at the intersection of scholarly traditions and disciplines, this study day wishes to understand this phenomenon by crossing perspectives from scholars studying "Eastern" and "Western" – as far as these categories are relevant – case studies, from the legendary Mount Ararat, resting place of Noah's Ark, to the Mount Athos and to a series of places which are profoundl embedded in premodern collective memory such as, e.g., the Campo Santo of Pisa, Saint-Denis
abbey, or the Monte Sant'Angelo. The mythicization of space is, of course, not only the result of these factors playing together: this workshop also wishes to investigate the purposeful fabrication of place by policymakers, from ruling powers to ecclesiastical authorities.

UNIL

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