Robin Meyer
Assistant professor in historical linguistics.
Formerly Diebold Research Assistant in Comparative Philology, University of Oxford.
DPhil (Comparative Philology and General Linguistics), Oxford (Wolfson College), 2017
MPhil (General Linguistics and Comparative Philology), Oxford (Wolfson College), 2013
BA (Classics and Oriental Studies), Oxford (University College), 2011
Formerly Diebold Research Assistant in Comparative Philology, University of Oxford.
DPhil (Comparative Philology and General Linguistics), Oxford (Wolfson College), 2017
MPhil (General Linguistics and Comparative Philology), Oxford (Wolfson College), 2013
BA (Classics and Oriental Studies), Oxford (University College), 2011
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Consacré à la vie et à l’œuvre de Meillet, ce numéro réunit des réflexions à la fois linguistiques et historiques, des réévaluations des apports de ses orientations significatives (la linguistique grecque, la linguistique arménienne, les études homériques) et des contributions abordant des aspects encore peu traités de son héritage.
From pilgrimage sites in the far west of Europe to the Persian court; from mystic visions to a gruesome contemporary “dance”; from a mundane poem on wine to staggering religious art: thus far in space and time extends the world of the Armenians.
A glimpse of the vast and still largely unexplored threads that connect it to the wider world is offered by the papers assembled here in homage to one of the most versatile contemporary armenologists, Theo Maarten van Lint.
This collection offers original insights through a multifaceted lens, showing how much Armenology can offer to Art History, History, Linguistics, Philology, Literature, and Religious Studies. Scholars will find new inspirations and connections, while the general reader will open a window to a world that is just as wide as it is often unseen.
With the help of the Bodleian Libraries’ magnificent collection of Armenian manuscripts and early printed books, this volume tells the story of the region through the medium of its cultural output. Together with introductions written by experts in their fields, close to one hundred manuscripts, works of art and religious artefacts serve as a guide to Armenian culture and history. Gospel manuscripts splendidly illuminated by Armenian masters feature next to philosophical tractates and merchants’ handbooks, affording us an insight into what makes the Armenian people truly unique, especially in the shadow of the genocide that threatened their annihilation a hundred years ago: namely their spirituality, language and perseverance in the face of adversity.
Next to the work of Charles Dowsett (1997), which treats mainly of the life, poetic topics, and style of Sayat‘-Nova, little further literature is available as concerns his language; even an English translation of his poetry is as yet a desideratum.
This paper addresses the lack of a modern translation that does justice to Sayat‘-Nova’s language. It proposes two manners in which his multilingual poetry can be translated without losing entirely the richness and expressiveness of his language: a multilingual approach to the target language environment (combining English as the matrix language with French elements); and a rendition by materilingual estrangement, using typographical means to translate originally non-Armenian elements.
It is argued that the construction of the Classical Armenian perfect, which consists of a participle in -eal (< PIE *-lo-) and an optional form of the copula, is most accurately described as tripartite morphosyntactic alignment:
• intransitive and transitive passive verbs construe with a NOM subject under subject agreement of the copula;
• transitive active verbs take GEN agents, ACC objects, and the copula is an invariant 3.SG.
This pattern shows some diachronic variation and by the 8th century CE has given way to NOM–ACC alignment under pressure from the rest of the verbal system. Based on observations in the corpus and typological data, this alignment pattern can be explained as a case of pattern replication and pivot matching of a Middle Iranian, specifically Parthian, ERG–ABS model in pre-literary times and subsequent adaptation to Armenian requirements cf. MEYER (2016; 2017).
This explanation is lent further credence by the existence of both a great wealth of Iranian loanwords in Armenian, as well as a small number of other syntactic patterns that have clear Iranian parallels. Furthermore, the prevalence of political quarrels between the Parthian rulers of Armenia and other Iranians, their adoption of Christianity in c. 301 CE, frequent intermarriage with Armenians, and the lack of any Parthian language documents in the area suggest that the existence of Iranian syntactic patterns in Armenian is due not only to language contact, but indeed to language shift of the Parthian ruling class to Armenian. This, in turn, may provide a partial explanation of the first ‘death’ of Parthian, a significant attestation gap between Arsacid inscriptions and later religious documents.
This paper suggests that a priori there are no typological constraints against pattern replication in general. It is proposed that typological differences between model and replica pattern are only of relevance during the grammaticalisation and maintenance of such patterns in the replica language; in other words, typological constraints do not apply at the stage of pattern replication. It will be argued that typology, in the form of system pressure, interacts with pattern frequency and socio-historical factors, which together determine retention, adaptation, or loss of a replicated pattern.
This argument is illustrated on the basis of three short studies of partial alignment change in Old Aramaic, Classical Armenian, and North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic, all of which have been in contact with Iranian languages for extended periods. In each case, Iranian ergative alignment patterns have been replicated, adapted, grammaticalised to varying degrees, and finally ousted in favour of nominative-accusative alignment. The loss of the replica pattern in each case is shown to be dependent on both typology, extent of bilingualism, and pattern frequency.
It will be shown that, as argued by Lafontaine and Coulie (1983), next to Classical and Hellenising Armenian, we must construe a pre-Hellenising layer of the language. This layer, it is argued, is not to be separated from the Yunaban Dproc‘; instead, both form part of a continuum of Greek influence on Armenian. This is evident in the applicability of different case matching restrictions in Biblical texts compared to the works of Agat‘angełos, Eznik, and Ełišē, specifically in free and light-headed relative clauses. The case of the relative pronoun in Greek relative clauses can be determined by the matrix clause in Biblical Armenian, whereas in non-translated literature such structures do generally not occur.
It will further be argued that cases of Armenian ‘relative attraction’ present almost exclusively in free relative clauses; taking as its basis patterns put forward by Grosu (1994) and Keenan and Comrie (1977), these cases of attraction, together with evidence from Greek, will be taken as indication for the existence of what may be called Discourse Accessibility Hierarchy.
Like Meyer (2013), this paper suggests that on the level of syntax, too, Iranian (particularly Parthian) has had great influence on Armenian. The transitive periphrastic perfect, which is construed with a participle, genitive subject and accusative object accompanied by an optional static 3.Sg. copula, is shown to be the likely outcome of Parthian split-ergative alignment.
The participle is instead derived from a combination of the passive-intransitive suffix *-iya- as found in, e.g., Indo-Iranian languages, and the verbal adjective marker *-lo-; both are added to the bare root of the verb.
Participles which are demonstrably formed on the aorist stem (type gnam 'to go', aor. gnac‘i, ptcp. gnac‘eal) are the result of late formations made for reasons of phonological stability, or formed on the basis of secondary verbal stems.
Consacré à la vie et à l’œuvre de Meillet, ce numéro réunit des réflexions à la fois linguistiques et historiques, des réévaluations des apports de ses orientations significatives (la linguistique grecque, la linguistique arménienne, les études homériques) et des contributions abordant des aspects encore peu traités de son héritage.
From pilgrimage sites in the far west of Europe to the Persian court; from mystic visions to a gruesome contemporary “dance”; from a mundane poem on wine to staggering religious art: thus far in space and time extends the world of the Armenians.
A glimpse of the vast and still largely unexplored threads that connect it to the wider world is offered by the papers assembled here in homage to one of the most versatile contemporary armenologists, Theo Maarten van Lint.
This collection offers original insights through a multifaceted lens, showing how much Armenology can offer to Art History, History, Linguistics, Philology, Literature, and Religious Studies. Scholars will find new inspirations and connections, while the general reader will open a window to a world that is just as wide as it is often unseen.
With the help of the Bodleian Libraries’ magnificent collection of Armenian manuscripts and early printed books, this volume tells the story of the region through the medium of its cultural output. Together with introductions written by experts in their fields, close to one hundred manuscripts, works of art and religious artefacts serve as a guide to Armenian culture and history. Gospel manuscripts splendidly illuminated by Armenian masters feature next to philosophical tractates and merchants’ handbooks, affording us an insight into what makes the Armenian people truly unique, especially in the shadow of the genocide that threatened their annihilation a hundred years ago: namely their spirituality, language and perseverance in the face of adversity.
Next to the work of Charles Dowsett (1997), which treats mainly of the life, poetic topics, and style of Sayat‘-Nova, little further literature is available as concerns his language; even an English translation of his poetry is as yet a desideratum.
This paper addresses the lack of a modern translation that does justice to Sayat‘-Nova’s language. It proposes two manners in which his multilingual poetry can be translated without losing entirely the richness and expressiveness of his language: a multilingual approach to the target language environment (combining English as the matrix language with French elements); and a rendition by materilingual estrangement, using typographical means to translate originally non-Armenian elements.
It is argued that the construction of the Classical Armenian perfect, which consists of a participle in -eal (< PIE *-lo-) and an optional form of the copula, is most accurately described as tripartite morphosyntactic alignment:
• intransitive and transitive passive verbs construe with a NOM subject under subject agreement of the copula;
• transitive active verbs take GEN agents, ACC objects, and the copula is an invariant 3.SG.
This pattern shows some diachronic variation and by the 8th century CE has given way to NOM–ACC alignment under pressure from the rest of the verbal system. Based on observations in the corpus and typological data, this alignment pattern can be explained as a case of pattern replication and pivot matching of a Middle Iranian, specifically Parthian, ERG–ABS model in pre-literary times and subsequent adaptation to Armenian requirements cf. MEYER (2016; 2017).
This explanation is lent further credence by the existence of both a great wealth of Iranian loanwords in Armenian, as well as a small number of other syntactic patterns that have clear Iranian parallels. Furthermore, the prevalence of political quarrels between the Parthian rulers of Armenia and other Iranians, their adoption of Christianity in c. 301 CE, frequent intermarriage with Armenians, and the lack of any Parthian language documents in the area suggest that the existence of Iranian syntactic patterns in Armenian is due not only to language contact, but indeed to language shift of the Parthian ruling class to Armenian. This, in turn, may provide a partial explanation of the first ‘death’ of Parthian, a significant attestation gap between Arsacid inscriptions and later religious documents.
This paper suggests that a priori there are no typological constraints against pattern replication in general. It is proposed that typological differences between model and replica pattern are only of relevance during the grammaticalisation and maintenance of such patterns in the replica language; in other words, typological constraints do not apply at the stage of pattern replication. It will be argued that typology, in the form of system pressure, interacts with pattern frequency and socio-historical factors, which together determine retention, adaptation, or loss of a replicated pattern.
This argument is illustrated on the basis of three short studies of partial alignment change in Old Aramaic, Classical Armenian, and North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic, all of which have been in contact with Iranian languages for extended periods. In each case, Iranian ergative alignment patterns have been replicated, adapted, grammaticalised to varying degrees, and finally ousted in favour of nominative-accusative alignment. The loss of the replica pattern in each case is shown to be dependent on both typology, extent of bilingualism, and pattern frequency.
It will be shown that, as argued by Lafontaine and Coulie (1983), next to Classical and Hellenising Armenian, we must construe a pre-Hellenising layer of the language. This layer, it is argued, is not to be separated from the Yunaban Dproc‘; instead, both form part of a continuum of Greek influence on Armenian. This is evident in the applicability of different case matching restrictions in Biblical texts compared to the works of Agat‘angełos, Eznik, and Ełišē, specifically in free and light-headed relative clauses. The case of the relative pronoun in Greek relative clauses can be determined by the matrix clause in Biblical Armenian, whereas in non-translated literature such structures do generally not occur.
It will further be argued that cases of Armenian ‘relative attraction’ present almost exclusively in free relative clauses; taking as its basis patterns put forward by Grosu (1994) and Keenan and Comrie (1977), these cases of attraction, together with evidence from Greek, will be taken as indication for the existence of what may be called Discourse Accessibility Hierarchy.
Like Meyer (2013), this paper suggests that on the level of syntax, too, Iranian (particularly Parthian) has had great influence on Armenian. The transitive periphrastic perfect, which is construed with a participle, genitive subject and accusative object accompanied by an optional static 3.Sg. copula, is shown to be the likely outcome of Parthian split-ergative alignment.
The participle is instead derived from a combination of the passive-intransitive suffix *-iya- as found in, e.g., Indo-Iranian languages, and the verbal adjective marker *-lo-; both are added to the bare root of the verb.
Participles which are demonstrably formed on the aorist stem (type gnam 'to go', aor. gnac‘i, ptcp. gnac‘eal) are the result of late formations made for reasons of phonological stability, or formed on the basis of secondary verbal stems.
The functional analysis, on the other hand, suggests that no single semantic value can be attributed to the discourse particle; rather, it fulfils a pragmatic function, providing focus to an associated noun phrase.
It will be shown that, as argued by Coulie and Lafontaine (1983), next to Classical and Hellenising Armenian, we must construe a pre-Hellenising layer of the language; this layer, it is argued, is not to be separated from the Hunaban Dproc‘ – instead, both form part of a continuum of Greek influence on Armenian.
This is evident in the applicability of different case matching restrictions in Biblical texts compared to the works of Agat‘angełos, Eznik and Ełišē, specifically in free and light-headed relative clauses.
It will further be argued that cases of Armenian 'relative attraction' present almost exclusively in free relative clauses; taking as its basis patterns put forward by Grosu (1994) and Keenan & Comrie (1977), these cases of attraction will be taken as evidence for the existence of what may be called Discourse Accessibility Hierarchy."
The major pattern, the Classical Armenian periphrastic perfect, has previously been the focus of numerous papers owing to its unusual construction: while intransitive verbs construe with nominative subjects and an optional form of the copula in subject agreement, transitive verbs exhibit genitive agents, accusative objects and an optional copula in a invariable 3.sg form. Based on a discussion of morphosyntactic alignment patterns in general, and of Armenian and West Middle Iranian in particular, it is shown that previous accounts cannot satisfactorily explain the syntax of the perfect. In a new approach, it is argued that Armenian exhibits tripartite morphosyntactic alignment as the result of 'copying' and adapting the ergative alignment pattern of the West Middle Iranian past tense. This analysis is supported both by the historical morphology of the perfect participle and by a corpus analysis of five major works of Armenian 5th-century historiography.
The minor patterns—ezēfe-like nominal relative clauses, subject resumption and switch-reference marking using the anaphoric pronoun Arm. ink'n, and the quotative use of Arm. (e)t'ē—are equally linked to parallel constructions in West Middle Iranian, which may have served as syntactic models for their Armenian counterparts.
The final part of the study discusses the Armenian–Iranian relationship from a language contact point of view and, making use of historical, epigraphic, and literary sources, proposes that a superstrate shift of the Parthian-speaking ruling class of Armenia to Armenian as their primary language best explains the amount of Parthian linguistic material and patterns in Armenian.
Dans cette grammaire ainsi que dans ses études publiées ailleurs, Meillet aborda un nombre important de questions et de problèmes concernant la phonologie, la morphologie et la syntaxe de l’arménien classique, même si parfois il n’offrit que des observations brèves ou n’arriva pas encore à une solution satisfaisante. C’est dans ce type de contexte que les chercheurs et chercheuses des générations suivantes trouvèrent leurs objectifs, leurs problèmes à résoudre, leurs motivations.
La présente contribution propose de revisiter une sélection de questions-clés abordées en premier par Meillet et développées plus tard par ses successeurs et successeuses. Son objectif est à la fois de souligner le rôle fondamental que joua Antoine Meillet dans l’histoire de la linguistique arménienne du XXe et même XXIe siècle et de démontrer clairement que même ses propositions ou solutions rejetées ou fortement modifiées au cours du temps demeurent extrêmement précieuses pour le succès de la recherche linguistique.
Face à l’ampleur de l’œuvre de Meillet, notre étude se focalisera sur la syntaxe historique de l’arménien classique, champs le moins exploré par la recherche du XXe siècle, mais tout à fait indispensable pour la compréhension de l’évolution de l’arménien et de ses contacts avec l’environnement dès sa première attestation. En particulier, nous revisiterons, entre autres, l’histoire du parfait périphrastique, l’ordre des constituants et la proposition relative en arménien classique en comparant la perspective de Meillet avec celles de ses héritiers et héritières.
Since then, a number of scholars have sought, in turn, to refute this line of reasoning (NERSESSIAN 1979; MUŠEŁYAN 1990; TOPCHYAN 2006), and to prove that THOMSON’s arguments for an 8th-century date do not hold. To date, however, no studies of the language of Movsēs have been conducted, although the linguistic features—including lexis, morphology, and syntax—of his work might provide clues as to its age.
This paper proposes to undertake such a study with reference to a specific linguistic variable: the morphosyntactic alignment of the periphrastic perfect, which shows significant diachronic developments between the 5th and 8th centuries (WEITENBERG 1986; MEYER 2016, 2017), and may thus be used as a prime indicator for the age of the text.
The two factors under consideration are:
- the incidence of non-standard argument marking (genitive agents with intransitive verbs; nominative agents with transitive verbs);
- the incidence of copulative and non-copulative uses of the perfect (excluding converbs) and the relevant agreement patterns.
The data gleaned from Movsēs Xorenac‘i will be compared to that of other 5th-century texts, including those of Koriwn, Agat‘angełos, and the Epic Histories. Preliminary data suggests a confirmation of THOMSON’s perspective.
- later dating of the Greek original (likely 4th c. CE; cf. di Benedetto 1959–9, Robins 1995);
- increasing doubts in the concept of the ‘Hellenising School’ (cf. Lafontaine & Coulie 1983, Coulie 1994–5, Meyer 2019);
- relative scholarly negligence of the contents of the Armenian τέχνη.
This paper argues that the Armenian τέχνη is more than just an example—or even the example—of grecising Armenian. It represents, in fact, a clear indicator of Armenian scholarly thought and practice caught between the received, Byzantine concept of (Greek) grammar, and an attempt at innovating, actualising, and making the grammar relevant to Armenian speakers. Thus it is equally caught between translation and adaptation, as well as the ‘Other’ and the ‘Self’.
By comparing the Armenian τέχνη with both the Greek original, current thinking on Classical Armenian linguistics, and its later commentaries, this paper will show that this adaptation sought to bridge the divide between (Byzantine Greek) ‘guidelines’ and (Armenian) realities, like in other areas of Armenian history, culture, and art; in this case, however, it did not succeed.
References
Adontz, N. (1970) Denys de Thrace et les commentateurs arm ́eniens (transl. from Russian), Imprimerie Orientaliste.
Clackson, J. (1995) “The Technē in Armenian,” in V. Law and I. Sluiter (eds.), Dionysius Thrax and the Technē grammatikē, Münster: Nodus Publikationen, 121–133.
Coulie, B. (1994-5) “Style et Traduction: Réflexions sur les versions arméniennes de textes grecs,” REArm 25, 43–62.
di Benedetto, V. (1958–9) “Dionisio Trace e la Techne a lui attribuita,” Annali della Sciola Normale Superiore di Pisa (2nd ser.) 27/28, 169–210, 87–118.
Lafontaine, G. and Coulie, B. (1983) La version arménienne des discours de Grégoire de Nazianze: tradition manuscrite et histoire de texte, volume 446 of Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium: Subsidia, Leuven: Peeters.
Meyer, R. (2019) “Syntactical Peculiarities of Relative Clauses in the Armenian New Testament,” Revue des Études Arméniennes 38.
Muradyan, G. (2012) Grecisms in ancient Armenian, Leuven: Peeters.
Robins, R.H. (1995) “The Authenticity of the Technē: The status quaestionis,” in V. Law and I. Sluiter (eds.), Dionysius Thrax and the Technē grammatikē, Münster: Nodus Publikationen, 13–26.
The usage of Arm. (e)t‘ē as complementiser and quotative marker, including before direct and indirect wh-questions, is typologically uncommon, but finds almost exact parallels in the functional distribution of WMIr. kw /kū/. Similarly, the use of Pth. wxd /wxad/, MP xwd /xwad/ ‘self’ as an intensifier, subject-indexed resumptive pronoun, and switch-function marker is reflected closely in the use of Arm. ink‘n (cf. Meyer 2013). Finally, both Armenian and Iranian exhibit nominal, i.e. verbless, relative clauses, which may (but need not necessarily) be seen as a further indication of syntactic parallels (cf. already Meillet 1899-1900: 379 n. 1; 1906–08:21). It is argued that these parallels are not mere coincidence, but the result of extended language contact between Armenian and particularly Parthian during the Arsacid period; Iranian influence on Armenian is clearly observable in the lexicon (cf. Schmitt 1983), but more difficult to determine with regard to syntax.
For such patterns to have been adopted into Armenian, the extent of contact needs to have been even more significant than previously thought. This paper proposes that the replication of these syntagmata, amongst other linguistic and socio-historical indicators, suggests that the Parthian ruling class of Armenia were not only Parthian-Armenian bilinguals, but actively adopted Armenian as their main means of communication at some point between the fall of the Parthian Empire in 224 CE and the end of the Arsacid dynasty in 428 CE.
References
Meillet, A. (1899-1900) “Recherches sur la syntaxe comparée de l’arménien I,” Mémoires de la Société Linguistique de Paris 11 (6), 369–388.
Meillet, A. (1906–08) “La phrase nominale en indo-européen,” Mémoires de la Société Linguistique de Paris 14 (1), 1–26.
Meyer, R. (2013) “Armeno-Iranian Structural Interaction: The Case of Parthian wxd, Armenian ink‘n,” Iran and the Caucasus 17 (4), 401–425.
Schmitt, R. (1983) “Iranisches Lehngut im Armenischen,” Revue des Études Arméniennes 17, 73–112.
It is argued that the construction of the Classical Armenian perfect, which consists of a participle in -eal (< PIE *-lo-) and an (optional) form of the copula, is most accurately described as tripartite morphosyntactic alignment (for other views, cf. Benveniste 1952, Stempel 1983, Weitenberg 1986, Kölligan 2013):
• Intransitive and transitive passive verbs construe with a nom subject and subject agreement of the copula;
• Transitive active verbs take gen agents, acc objects, and the copula is a petrified 3.sg.
This pattern shows some diachronic variation and by the 8th century CE has given way to nom-acc alignment under pressure from the rest of the verbal system. Based on observations in the corpus data and typological data, this alignment pattern can be explained as a case of pattern replication and pivot matching of an Middle Iranian, specifically Parthian, erg-abs model in pre-literary times and subsequent adaptation to Armenian requirements (cf. Meyer 2016, 2017).
This explanation is lent further credence by the existence of both a great wealth of Iranian loanwords in Armenian, as well as a small number of other linguistic patterns that have clear Iranian parallels. Furthermore, the prevalence of political quarrels between the Parthian rulers of Armenia and other Iranians, their adoption of Christianity in c. 301 CE, frequent intermarriage with Armenians, and the lack of any Parthian language data in the area suggest that the existence of Iranian syntactic patterns in Armenian is due not only to language contact, but indeed to language shift of the Parthian ruling class to Armenian.
This paper suggests that case attraction of non- case matching free relative clauses in the Armenian New Testament is the direct result of interference from Greek syntax.
Owing to its origins in translation, and thus the deliberateness of its application, this phenomenon proves to be a good diagnostic tool for checking—and indeed corroborating—the universal validity of Grosu’s (1994) claim concerning case hierarchies.
It is suggested that there may have been two phases of language contact, possibly divided by the fall of the Parthian Empire (224 CE) or the advent of Armenian Christianity (early 4th century CE). In the latter phase, the Parthian ruling class actively dissociates from other Iranian peoples, and accepts Armenian as an 'emblematic' language of its domain and culture.
The paper further addresses issues of previous research and extralinguistic data.
These nominal relative clauses, which immediately precede or follow upon their pivot, initially underwent optional case attraction into the case of the pivot (presumably dating back to Common Iranian) owing to opaque case assignment as a result of copula elision; such cases are attested for Old and Young Avestan, and for Old Persian. By the time of Young Avestan (and arguably Old Persian), the attracted relative pronoun has begun to be replaced by a non-case-marked relative particle homonymous with the complementiser, suggesting a re-analysis of the original relative clause as an attributive phrase.
ALPI, F. ‒ MEYER, R. ‒ TINTI, I. ‒ ZAKARIAN, D. (eds., in press), Armenia through the Lens of Time. Multidisciplinary Studies in Honour of Theo Marteen van Lint, Brill (Armenian Texts and Studies), Leiden – Boston.
From pilgrimage sites in the far west of Europe to the Persian court; from mystic visions to a gruesome contemporary “dance”; from a mundane poem on wine to staggering religious art: thus far in space and time extends the world of the Armenians.
A glimpse of the vast and still largely unexplored threads that connect it to the wider world is offered by the papers assembled here in homage to one of the most versatile contemporary armenologists, Theo Maarten van Lint.
This collection offers original insights through a multifaceted lens, showing how much Armenology can offer to Art History, History, Linguistics, Philology, Literature, and Religious Studies. Scholars will find new inspirations and connections, while the general reader will open a window to a world that is just as wide as it is often unseen.
https://sites.google.com/view/armlingphil2020/recordings?authuser=0
Amid the flood of icon studies in recent decades, Vrt‘anēs’ contribution goes unexamined and virtually unmentioned. It is the purpose of the present Workshop to offer to the scholarly community a fresh translation into English of this critical document and to open the field to new scholarship, to which the scholars mentioned below cordially were invited to contribute from their own valuable background in the field.
The new translation prepared by Christina Maranci, Arthur H. Dadian and Ara T. Oztemel Chair of Art History, Tufts University, with Theo Maarten van Lint, Calouste Gulbenkian Chair of Armenian Studies at the University of Oxford, will be circulated in advance among the contributing participants. The place of the treatise in the history of the Armenian language and literature, the theological premises of its argument in the debate among Orthodox and Monophysite theologians, its background in earlier writings – Jewish, pagan and Christian – its contribution to the Byzantine dialogue on icon cult and its long-range impact on the history of art will all be under discussion in the two day conference.
The workshop will convene at Pembroke College, University of Oxford 30-31 October as part of the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the Calouste Gulbenkian Professorship of Armenian Studies at the University of Oxford.
The workshop is convened by: Dr Jaś Elsner, Professor Thomas F. Mathews, Professor Christina Maranci, and Professor Theo Maarten van Lint.
The workshop is hosted by Theo van Lint, incumbent of the Calouste Gulbenkian Professorship of Armenian Studies and Fellow of Pembroke College, University of Oxford.
The workshop is made possible by a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.