Erik Pulz, Making history, making historiography: Sallust in dialogue with his characters

Description: For my research project here at Stanford I am working on different kinds of echoes between proems and character speeches in Sallust’s works. Such echoes arise when proem and character speech share and vary the same themes, motifs, or diction. Key for me is the concept of metalepsis that builds on theories of structuralist narratology. A metalepsis is defined as a transgression from one narrative level to another, e.g., when a character in a fiction intrudes into the author’s or the reader’s world. In my research talk I will demonstrate that metaleptic echoes are remarkably common in Sallust (and other historians). I will argue that the strict separation of author and character may not be the best way to understand the relationship between proems and speeches in Sallust’s work since, by engaging in historical or historiographical discussions with the author, character speeches have functions that go beyond the actual narrative. In the end, Sallust’s characters, just like the author, make historiography as well as they made history.

Biography: I am a Visiting Postdoctoral Scholar at Stanford studying the relationship between author and character in ancient historiography. Currently, I am preparing a paper on metalepsis in the works of Sallust. My second field of interest lays in early Latin poetry. I received my Ph.D. from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg with a dissertation on the fragmentary poet Laevius who lived around 130 BC (forthcoming in UaLG, De Gruyter). My most recent papers are on the earliest Latin love epigrams known to us (published in Materiali e Discussioni 88, 2022, pp. 9-66) and on the Atellana poet Aprissius (forthcoming in Rheinisches Museum für Philologie). I have been awarded a Ph.D scholarship by the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes (German Academic Scholarship Foundation) and a scholarship for young researches by the Foundation Hardt (Geneva). I was member of the editorial board of the German journal Forum Classicum for one year.

Lunch will be provided at event. This event will not be available via zoom and will not be recorded.