First International Conference on Hermeneutics of Symbol, Myth and “Modernity of antiquity” in Italian literature and the Arts from the Renaissance up to the present day

First International Conference on Hermeneutics of Symbol, Myth and "Modernity of antiquity" in Italian literature and the Arts from the Renaissance up to the present day 1st to 2nd December 2015 Milan, Italy http://convegni.unicatt.it/ermeneuticasimbolomitoemodernitadellantico The hermeneutics of the "modernity of the antiquity"» is a still pioneering branch of research in Italian literature and art studies aimed discovering the hidden meaning of literary and art works where other approaches failed or proved unsatisfactory. Its distinguishing trait consists in using, along with all the results of historical, critical and philological studies, ancient pagan religious and mythological sources and heresiological traditions as tools to interprete literary and artistic works skillfully conceived as erudite enigmas with the multilayered semantic structure of a shrine or of a palimpsest. Its main objective is to open the lid of the shrine, namely to go beyond the scriptio superior of the images so as to discover their true but veiled meaning. Such images, conceived with a palimpsest structure, are therefore symbols. "One made of two" is indeed the basic meaning of the Greek word ????????, as used by Plato in Symposium 16, 191D. A symbolic image also has a different meaning. In other words, it contains an idea which gives it a meaning other than the apparent, realistic one. In the case of images and works conceived from the perspective of the "modernity of antiquity", it is a mythological-religious heathen or heresiological idea, belonging to non-Homeric, but anti-Olympic ancient religious systems, or ancient mystery cults, either Mediterranean or non Mediterranean. Within the perspective of the "modernity of the antiquity", a scholar who does not limit its research to a descriptive, analytical and empirical analysis, will have to find and prove the existence of this idea. The «First International Conference on Hermeneutics of Symbol, Myth and "Modernity of antiquity"» in Italian literature and the Arts from the Renaissance up to the present day represents a chance to promote the hermeneutics of the "modernity of the antiquity" and, at the same time, to stimulate new and further studies in this direction that, although still unexplored, promises to open up new and interesting hermeneutical perspectives. ENQUIRIES: ermeneutica.SMMA@unicatt.it SPONSORED BY: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore GENERAL CONFERENCE CHAIRS Angela Ida Villa (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano) Bart Van Den Bossche (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)