Hexameters beyond the canon: new poetry on papyri from Roman and Byzantine Egypt

现存的古希腊文学史倾向于几乎完全关注“正典”作者，将基督教文学与异教文学区分开来，从而模糊了许多关键特征。该项目旨在通过研究从公元1世纪到6世纪罗马埃及的多语言和多元文化背景下非规范的希腊六韵诗的传播和流通来纠正这种观点。这是第一次系统地尝试绘制文本，文化和历史动态的丰富，但研究不足的偶尔，以用途为导向的文学，通常被称为gebrauchsliterature。这种功能性诗歌涵盖了广泛的流派，在一段时间内见证了罗马埃及文化，政治和宗教场景的重大变化。我们的有利位置是奥克西林库斯，这是埃及中部的一个省会城市，也就是说，在主要权力中心（罗马、亚历山大、君士坦丁堡、安提阿）之外。在古代，无论是古典时期还是后古典时期，六韵体都被认为是最杰出的文学交流形式。它被回收并用于社会各阶层的功能目的，从高层和贵族到纪念当地事件的普通人，私人和公共，从业余爱好者到流浪诗人，从教师到愿意取悦上级的公务员，以及或多或少有文化的士兵记录他们的社会愿望等等。这些文本的多样性和多样性使我们能够恢复被官方高雅文化所忽视的整个文学流派：它从地理边缘的角度提供了对当时日常文化生活的罕见一瞥。在线版和印刷版的120首未出版的新六步诗纸莎草诗将大大增加现有的证据体，并将帮助我们为其文化历史分析（偶尔诗歌的社会功能）提供一个解释性框架。绘制这种中低级作品的发展地图，使我们能够看到传统体裁是如何适应文学生产环境的变化的。将这种类型的诗歌与罗马帝国东部省份的当代铭文作品（格律铭文和涂鸦）进行比较，是更全面地理解这种类型的文学及其文学、文化和社会价值的另一个重要步骤。除了学术出版物（新纸莎草纸的网络版和印刷版；多作者的专著；同行评议的文章），该项目还将有大量的网络存在，包括供公众使用的材料（包括播客）和一个用户友好的、可搜索的数据库版本，所有这些都是开放获取的。因此，学术之外的影响将主要是文化方面的：最具变革意义的一步将是使这些被忽视的材料开放，并向非专业公众开放。为了促进这种更广泛的影响，该项目设想：(i)建立一个引人入胜、面向外部的网站，其中包括音频和录像、图像、短文、诗歌节选和链接，以及一个可免费访问的数据库；（ii）与“虹膜计划”合作安排一系列学校讲座，在公立学校推广古典文学。作为来自遥远过去的书面文物，纸莎草纸能立即引起人们的注意，并能将学童与古代世界具体而生动地联系起来；（iii）在牛津大学博德利图书馆举办展览，展示一些新材料。最后，对于该项目的教育精神同样重要的是，一些未出版的材料将提供给本科生和研究生学习，他们将因此学习技术知识，同时也会感受到实践奖学金的兴奋。

Existing literary histories of ancient Greek literature tend to focus almost exclusively on 'canonical' authors, dividing Christian from pagan literature and thus obscuring a number of key features. The project aims at correcting this perspective by studying the diffusion and circulation of non-canonical Greek hexameter poetry within the multilingual and multicultural context of Roman Egypt from the 1st to the 6th century CE. This is the first systematic attempt at charting the textual, cultural and historical dynamics of a rich but understudied body of occasional, use-oriented literature, commonly known as Gebrauchsliteratur. This functional poetry covers a wide range of genres over a period of time that saw momentous changes in the cultural, political and religious scene of Roman Egypt. Our vantage point will be that of Oxyrhynchus, a provincial metropolis in middle Egypt, that is, outside the main centres of power (Rome, Alexandria, Constantinople, Antioch). The hexameter was considered in antiquity, both in classical and post-classical times, as the most illustrious literary form of communication. It was reclaimed and adopted for functional purposes at all levels of society, from the high echelons and grandees to everyday people commemorating local events, private and public, from amateurs to wandering poets, from teachers to civil servants willing to please some superior, and more or less literate soldiers recording their social aspirations etc. The varied and multiform nature of these texts allows us to recover an entire strand of literature otherwise ignored by the official high culture: it provides a rare glimpse of the everyday cultural life of the time from a geographically peripheral perspective. The edition, on-line and in print, of 120 unpublished papyri of new hexameter poetry will substantially increase the existing body of evidence and will help us offer an interpretative framework for its cultural-historical analysis (the social functions of occasional poetry at large). To map the development over time of this mid-to-low-brow production enables us to see how traditional genres adapted to respond to the changed conditions of literary production. Comparison of this type of poetry with its closer analogue, the contemporary epigraphic production (metrical inscriptions and graffiti) of the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire is another important step towards a more comprehensive understanding of this type of literature and its literary, cultural and social value. As well as scholarly publications (editions, online and in print of the new papyri; a multi-authored monograph; peer-reviewed articles), the project will have a substantial web presence, containing materials for public use (including podcasts) and a user-friendly, searchable version of the database, all in open-access. The impact beyond the academy will thus be primarily cultural: the most transformative step will be to make this neglected material open and accessible to the lay-public. To promote this wider impact the project envisages: (i) the creation of an engaging, outward-facing website containing audio and video-recordings, images, mini-essays, excerpts from the poems and links and a freely accessible database; (ii) a series of schools talks, arranged via a partnership with the Iris Project, targeted at promoting Classics in state schools. As physical written artefacts from the distant past, papyri attract immediate attention and have the ability to connect school children concretely and vividly with the ancient world; (iii) an exhibition in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, showcasing some of the new material. Finally, but equally importantly for the educative ethos of the project, some of the unpublished material will be made available for study to undergraduate and graduate students, who will thus learn the technicalities but also the excitement of hands-on scholarship.