Foreword*

We would like to welcome everyone warmly to the Symposium Lendo, Vendo, e Ouvindo o Passado (Reading, Seeing, and Hearing the Past), a biennial meeting now in its 10th iteration, this time with the theme “Metamorfoses e metamorfoses”. We offer our deep thanks to the 34 speakers and 12 chairs as well as the colleagues, students, and technical assistants who have made this virtual meeting possible in such difficult times for teaching and research at Brazil’s public universities. After 18 years of symposia, this is a moment to celebrate, and we have arranged it so that, for this commemorative gathering, all of the round tables are being chaired by the co-organizers of the nine previous iterations. 

This symposium was co-organized by the Latinists Sandra M. G. B. Bianchet from Núcleo de Estudos Antigos e Medievais, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Rodrigo Gonçalves from Universidade Federal do Paraná and this year on sabbatical at UFMG, and Julia Batista Castilho de Avellar from the Federal University of Uberlândia (UFU), whose alma mater is UFMG. Also from UFU is Rubens Alves Sobrinho, who teaches ancient philosophy, and, from UFMG’s Philosophy Department, Maria Cecília de Miranda N. Coelho, the main organizer of the ten iterations.  

Like the previous symposium, this one will be held online through Zoom. While the virtual format may entail the danger of interruptions and technical glitches, it also allows for a broad range of speakers to participate from a variety of locations. Lendo, Vendo, e Ouvindo o Passado has transformed significantly over time as the participants have diligently and steadfastly strived to maintain interdisciplinarity and a dialogue between the perspectives of image and sound in (re)constructing the past, and it has generated its own (meta)reflections on the past, as the history of the proceedings indicates: 

Symposium 9: Diálogos entre Arqueologia, História, Literatura e Filosofia online, November 2020, UFMG, Belo Horizonte, Co-organizers: Antônio Orlando D. Lopes (Letras/UFMG), Érica Angliker (Institute of Classical Studies/School of Advanced Study/University of London), Igor B. Cardoso (Pós-Doutorando em Filosofia/UFMG), Júlia Batista Castilho de Avellar (Letras/UFU), Sandra M. G. B. Bianchet (Letras/UFMG), and Maria Cecilia M.N. Coelho (Filosofia /UFMG). 

Symposium 8: Recepção, Tradição e Canibalização de Clássicos, Viçosa, November 2018, UFV/UFMG. Co-organizers: Jacyntho Lins Brandão, Edson F. Martins, and Maria Cecilia M. N. Coelho (Filosofia /UFMG). 

Symposium 7: Entre Aporias, Dilemas, Paradoxos e Labirintos, São João del-Rei, April 2017, UFSJ/UFMG. Co-organizers: Jacyntho Lins Brandão, Luiz Paulo Rouanet, Richard Romeiro, and Maria Cecilia M.N. Coelho (Filosofia /UFMG). Publication: Nuntius Antiquus, 13-2 (Portuguese, English, French, and Italian). 

Symposium 6: Eros e Helena, de Tróia a Vila Rica, Ouro Preto, August 2014, UFOP/IFMG/UFMG; Co-organizers: Guiomar de Grammont, Teodoro Rennó Assunção, Venúncia Emilia Coelho, and Maria Cecilia M.N. Coelho (Filosofia /UFMG). Publication: Nuntius Antiquus, 12-1 (Portuguese and English). 

Symposium 5: Travessias: prosa-poesia, filosofia-literatura, Diamantina, April 2012, FEVALE/UFVJM/UFMG. Co-organizers: Diego Mesti da Silva, Teodoro Rennó Assunção, and Maria Cecilia M.N. Coelho (Filosofia /UFMG). 

Symposium 4: Entre Platão e Homero, poesia e filosofia, Montes Claros, November 2010, UEMG/UFMG. Co-organizers: Anna Christina Silva, and Maria Cecilia M.N. Coelho (Filosofia /UFMG). 

Symposium 3: António Vieira – retórica em imagens e palavras, Florianópolis, October 2008, Fundação Cultural BADESC/UFSC. Co-organizers: João Lupi, Valmir Muraro, and Maria Cecilia M.N. Coelho (Filosofia /UFMG). 

Symposium 2: Elementos trágicos e épicos na tradição do cancioneiro nas obras de Glauber Rocha e Elomar, Florianópolis, November 2006, UDESC. Co-organizers: Márcia Ramos de Oliveira, Allan Ghedini, Gláucia Assis Oliveira, and Maria Cecilia M.N. Coelho (Filosofia /UFMG). 

Symposium 1: Escrever e narrar: textos, mensageiros e história da escrita na cultura greco-romana, Florianópolis, May 2004, UDESC. Co-organizers: Márcia Ramos de Oliveira and Maria Cecilia M.N. Coelho (Filosofia /UFMG). 

The choice of the theme for this tenth symposium, “Metamorphoses and Metamorphoses”, serves as its starting point, a discussion of Ovid’s famous and influential poem. On the one hand, his work engages in dialogue with the Greek mythical past as well as with poetry (in form and content) and philosophy; on the other, its subsequent reception in literature, the plastic arts, cinema, and sculpture has been exceptionally rich and influential. However, in addition to the discussion of Ovid’s magnum opus, in this symposium, we also seek to bring together teachers of languages, literature, art history, history, film studies, archeology, and philosophy in an interdisciplinary dialogue. Our aim is to investigate the term “metamorphosis” and related concepts such as transformation, alteration, change, mutation, transfiguration, transmutation, transubstantiation, becoming, and movement. 

Thus, the proposal made to all the guests—to whom we are very grateful for having accepted this challenge—was to discuss complex concepts in distinct fields of knowledge and/or to articulate them in relation to this landmark of Western literature. Naturally, this is a daring task to attempt in just three days, though our efforts benefit from co-ordination with a film exhibition and a graduate seminar on the reception of Ovid in contemporary poetry, which, respectively, precede and follow the symposium (but, unlike it, are being held in person). Like most academic meetings, this one is intended both to disseminate cutting-edge research and to expose the participants (young and more experienced researchers alike) to a rich and complex universe of authors and problems in many areas of study and culture in general. We are convinced that the participants will find it worthwhile to take a deep dive into the Metamorphoses in particular and metamorphoses in general.  

Metamorphoses. In Ovid’s work, the declared aim of narrating “bodies changed into new forms” from the origins of the world to the poet’s own times makes transformation not only the subject but also the poetic form itself. The rapid sequence of metamorphic images, expressed in narratives that intertwine, presents to the reader a plastic universe, one that is unfinished and constantly changing. It is not by chance that Ovid, who was (probably) exiled, later reflected on his Metamorphoses in the verses of his Tristia, a posteriori composing an epigraph for a poem left unfinished. Just as the world formed in the Ovidian cosmogony is “rude”, so the poem itself is “rude” in that it is incomplete and under construction, open to multiple meanings and interpretations, undecidable, fluid, and … undergoing metamorphosis. 

Metamorphoses. With the term “metamorphosis”, a combination of the Greek words meta and morphē, we can associate related terms that were (and still are) used to translate or encompass the semantic field of other Greek words (such as kinesis, metabolē, alloiōsis, physis, or heterotes). Here, we depart from the more immediate sense of narratives about bodily transformations found mainly in stories about gods and heroes in order to explore issues such as the philosophical problem inherited from the pre-Socratics. Thus, we seek to study movement to find the principles (archai) and causes (aitiai) that explain and produce it, or, like philosophical inquiry itself, basing the foundations of modern science laid by Galileo on assumptions of superiority of immutability.  

From Aristotle to Darwin (regarding the generation and corruption of beings to the theory of evolution itself), from Apuleius to Kafka and Clarice Lispector (the ongoing discussion of humanity and animality), from Plato to Méliès (recognition of the illusory nature of narratives), to cite just a few examples, a very rich field has developed for understanding the terms of this universe of reflections and actions. These terms relate to the processes (more or less concrete or abstract) of metamorphoses. The session on wine, weaving, and ceramics, for example, leads us to reflect on practices that, if prosaic, involve intrinsic change in the human condition, the transformation of nature into the culture in ways that help to guarantee the survival of the species.  

Our dozen sessions present, therefore, but a small sample of the vast notion of metamorphosis that remains to be studied, investigated, and learned from. Therefore, we invite all who are interested in an interdisciplinary approach to the themes presented here, which involve fields of knowledge that have been developing and transforming from Antiquity to the present, to read, see, and hear the classics, missives from a past that is, in fact, still present. We hope to inspire fruitful interactions among all of the participants as we engage in enlightening and instigating discussion.