CML's Aglae Pizzone Awarded Research Project 1 Grant from Independent Research Fund Denmark
Independent Research Fund Denmark grant for the project “Medieval Self-Commentaries Beyond Europe: A Transcultural Perspective.”
CML/Danish Institute for Advanced Study Assistant Professor Aglae Pizzone has been awarded a Research Project 1 grant from Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond/Independent Research Fund Denmark (DKK 2,877,895) for the project “Medieval Self-Commentaries Beyond Europe: A Transcultural Perspective”, to run for three years from September 2019.
The project explores the medieval genesis of a new genre, called self-commentary, beyond European borders. It focuses in particular on the works of two authors, one writing in Greek (John Tzetzes, Constantinople, ca. 1110-1175) and the other writing in Arabic (Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī, Ma'arra, modern day Syria 973-1057). The projects aims to show that the preoccupations pushing authors to promote their own work by commenting on it are comparable across cultures and as such they are not distinctively Western. The project will involve a PhD fellowship and will be carried out by Aglae Pizzone in cooperation with Professor Lars Boje Mortensen (CML) and Dr. Kevin Blankinship (Brigham Young University), who will be based at CML during the 2020-21 academic year to study manuscript material preserved by the Royal Library of Copenhagen.
Research Project 1 is awarded by Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond to advance the quality of Danish research. A DFF-Research Project 1 is characterised by being a clear and well defined research question, where the research activities are expected to be of a high, international level of quality. In the 2019 funding round nine grants were awarded in the area of the Humanities.