November 16, 2015
Cro presents, chairs panel at modern language association
Melinda A. Cro, assistant professor of French and French language program coordinator in the modern languages department, presented two papers and chaired a panel Nov. 13-15 at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association.
A specialist in early modern French and Italian literature, Cro chaired the Italian I Medieval and Renaissance panel and presented two papers. The first, "Feminizing the Pastoral: Maddalena Campiglia's Flori (1588)" examines ways in which the playwright reappropriates and negotiates modal conventions of the pastoral, inverting the centrality of the male gaze and refashioning the conception of love. The second, "Art and Reception: The Function of Ekphrastic Galleries in the Astrée of Honoré d'Urfé," was presented in the 17th and 18th century French panel.
The paper examines the use of episodes of collectionist ekphrases in the novel in order to foreground the importance of notions of reception of artistic works. This stems from a larger project that Cro is currently working on evaluating the use of ekphrasis in the pastoral mode in early modern France.