Forgery has played a central role in literature and culture since antiquity. As a cultural phenomenon deeply rooted in social, political, economic, religious and literary contexts, it sheds light on the relationship between past and present throughout the centuries. Covering a wide range of meanings behind their production, forgeries of literary texts, manuscripts, archaeological artefacts or objects, epigraphical texts and historical documents, presuppose a complex, multi-faceted, process of imitatio/aemulatio and competition, originated in established educational practices and in a scholarly milieu. Following the renewal of interest in the rhetoric and culture of fake in classical and modern scholarship, this project aims to get a deeper look at the fascinating world of forgery by reflecting on the process of production and counterfeiting, clarifying then the forgers' backgrounds and the historical and cultural purposes behind the creation of simulated `authentic' material. This research project will adopt an interdisciplinary approach to the study of forgery in the Greco-Roman literary world, covering all the disciplines of antiquity (literature, ancient history, archaeology, and epigraphy) and spanning over a long and unparalleled period, from antiquity to the Renaissance, the so-called `age of forgery'. We will investigate both material fakes and literary pseudepigrapha in Greek and Roman literature as well as in Italian Humanism and Renaissance. Due attention will be paid to the origin, production and circulation of copies and faked artefacts in visual arts, statuary, and sculpture as well as to forgery of historical documents and epigraphical texts. We also plan to make use of digital resources for questions of authorship and attribution. Additionally, it is our aim to create an online catalogue of literary forgeries.
This project aims to make an original contribution to the research on fakes and forgeries in classical and modern culture by interpreting the phenomenon of forgery as the result of a process of revisitation and `modernization' of the past. Its innovative aspect lays on the interdisciplinary approach and the historical and cultural perspective by which we will examine counterfeited texts and object. In our view, forgery is a means of establishing - and reading - the relationship between past and present throughout the centuries. Within this large context, we will work on the historical, social, and cultural dynamics of forgery, which we consider an instrument to understand the impact of the past on the history of culture.
As for the State of the Art, this project will give an important and original improvement to the study of many significant aspects of forgery in ancient and modern cultures. Fostering a close interaction of different perspectives, we will reconsider the literary value of too often underestimated texts opening a window on the creative force of this 'literature of imitation'. Archaeologists, philologists, and historians will work side by side to revaluate fakes as valuable documents for the history of society and politics from antiquity to the Renaissance. The use of digital resources will represent a significant progress beyond the state of the art. In the footsteps of the EDF (the Epigraphic Database Falsae), a digital archive of epigraphic forgeries, directed by Lorenzo Calvelli, one of the participants in our project, we aim to create a catalogue of literary fakes and forgeries from antiquity to the sixteenth century, resorting also to ICT systems to solve questions of attribution and authorship. This will provide scholars and specialists (with different cultural and professional backgrounds) with a comprehensive inventory of forgeries (created in different times and with different purposes), an indispensable tool for anyone interested in finding out more on the role played by fakes in ancient and modern culture.