Belgeo (Dec 2014)
« Cartographie géo-littéraire et géo-historique de la mobilité aristocratique au Ve siècle d’après la correspondance de Sidoine Apollinaire : du voyage officiel au voyage épistolaire »
Abstract
This paper is novel in combining geographical and litterary approaches to shed light on the mobility of a Gallic aristocrat, Sidonius Apolinaris, in the fifth century a. D., in its real and ideal dimensions. Famous in his lifetime for his writings and his political role, Sidonius lived in troubled times: the Western Roman Empire was weakened by barbarian attacks and the gradual loss control of its territories. Thus, born a Roman citizen, Sidonius died a subject of a barbarian king. The collaboration between a latinist and a geographer propose a study of correspondance of Sidonius in his real and ideal spatial environment to highlight the complexity of political issues related to the places traveled or known by the author, based on a novel method: a mapping of Sidonius’s world in a predominantly heuristic goal. Using a geo-historical and geo-literary mapping, we intend to show the continuities and changes in aristocratic mobility and in the real and mental representations of space, as illustred by the correspondance of Sidonius Apollinaris.
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