CARMEN · Communal Art - Reconceptualising Metrical Epigraphy Network

Communal Art - Reconceptualising Metrical Epigraphy Network

Until November 2024, eleven doctoral students were trained in the "Communal Art - Reconceptualising Metrical Epigraphy Network" (CARMEN). Ancient historians, philologists, and archaeologists research on poetry as part of Roman everyday culture in the Latin language. We studied verses inscribed on funerary monuments of stone as well as on other objects like votives or in monuments like the Christian churches of late antiquity. Such poetic inscriptions document social relations, developments of language, and characterize aesthetic notions in Rome and the provinces from the third century BCE to the seventh century CE. The research and training group consisting of the ESRs, the supervisors and co-supervisors focused on different subjects and editorial undertakings of Carmina Epigraphica Latina with three objectives: 1) Identification of regional specifics and conditions for the production and display of verse inscriptions in the Roman Empire and its immediate successors from c. 300 BCE to 600 CE. 2) Laying foundations for an inclusive perspective of societal diversity based on a deeper understanding of the connection between Roman poetry and its visualised cultural expressions. 3) Analysing aesthetic standards in historical and contemporary contexts. The widespread notions of hierarchies of art and aesthetic standards are one of the last bastions of an exclusive and colonial view on human abilities that CARMEN attacks at its very heart: Roman art production. Poems and their musical counterpart, songs, are profoundly democratic by nature – in ancient and modern cultures alike. Our CARMEN research project is part of an academic and societal discourse about the forms of expressions, practices, relevance and esteem of popular culture. Focusing on this artistic folklore of the Roman Empire, the results of CARMEN have contributed to the scientific basis for an inclusive, decolonialised discourse about art and aesthetics. Therefore, our results have already fostered and will continue to promote a discussion of notions of quality, beauty and evaluation criteria independent from the social class of authors and artists.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union