"Domesticating Homer” The uses of Greek Antiquity for building national identity in Nineteenth-century Norway

The lecture by Prof. Amadou will take place on Thursday, 20 April 2023, at 7:00 p.m. (Athens) at the Norwegian Institute at Athens, Tsami Karatasou 5, 11742 (the lecture will also be streamed online via Zoom)

Registration is required for both in-person and virtual attendance.

To attend in-person or via Zoom, please register via the relevant link.

About the Speaker

Prof. Christine Amadou is a professor in the History of Ideas at the University of Oslo. She is leading the research group Norway’s Antiquity, working on the reception and the uses of the classical in nineteenth-century Norway. Christine Amadou is also a translator and a specialist in translation history.

About the Lecture

When the first translation of a part of Homer’s Iliad was published in Norwegian in 1852, the translator Frederik Moltke Bugge was accused of communism and the profanation of the canonized Greek poet. The Norwegian search for independence from the Danish culture in the nineteenth century led to an intense appropriation and domestication of the common Classical heritage. In this context, the translations, mainly from ancient Greek, were highly ideological and functioned in two ways: they gave the new nation status as an integral part of the Western civilization and aimed at revitalizing classical literature. This was the main argument for translating Homer: When being transposed to the New Norwegian language, he was “brought home” because both the nation of Norway and the poet Homer belonged to the pure and attractive “European Childhood.”

In this lecture, Prof. Christine Amadou will discuss these ideas on translation and national identity. She will explore the transposition of classical models into the Norwegian context, with a particular emphasis on the role of the earliest translations of Homer.