KomFrag-Kolloquium

Ein wesentlicher Bestandteil des Projekts Kommentierung der Fragmente der Griechischen Komödie ist das wissenschaftliche Kolloquium, in dem die Mitarbeiter des Projekts die Ergebnisse ihrer Arbeit zur Diskussion stellen. Professor S. Douglas Olson, der 2011-2012 als Humboldt Preisträger im Seminar für Klassische Philologie der Universität Freiburg forschte und regelmäßig am Kolloquium teilnahm, berichtet:  

«Nothing improves a manuscript more than a systematic, careful examination by a friendly but critical reader. Two sets of eyes—or four, or five—are always better than one, particularly when the original text or problem is difficult and the standard for success are high. Ideally, the process begins early on, and is repeated with the same reader or circle of readers as the project moves forward. But finding even a single colleague willing to read and comment on a complicated manuscript once can be challenging. KomFrag seminars aim to address this situation, by bringing authors working on commentaries for the Fragmenta Comica series together with a group of committed expert readers in an intense but supportive academic atmosphere.»

«For your first KomFrag meeting, you will be asked to prepare a sample text and commentary of 25 double-spaced pages or so. You will make the document as good as you can: you will think the original material through, pose all reasonable questions to it and search out answers to them, cite primary and secondary authorities carefully and as fully as will be useful for your ideal reader, and organize your discussion logically and clearly. About a week before the meeting, you will submit your sample as a .pdf. You will then make your way to Freiburg, a small beautiful city in the Black Forest and the home of the KomFrag project.»

«KomFrag meetings take place around a large table in the project office on the edge of the campus of the University of Freiburg. Five to seven people (including you) will be there. All of them will be members of the KomFrag team, and will care deeply about Greek comedy and about the comic fragments in particular, and about quality of the individual Fragmenta Comica volumes. The session will last two to three hours.»

«You will not make a presentation at KomFrag. Instead, the group will have read your sample carefully, and will begin on p. 1, line 1 and work forward systematically from there, asking you question after question about what you have written and why you have presented your arguments this way, and suggesting new possibilities for interpretation, new bibliography and new parallels. Ideally, the material will become even richer and more interesting than you thought it was, and your own text will look less polished and your commentary less comprehensive and insightful than it did a day or two earlier. You will also almost inevitably be asked about aspects of the text you had not considered; in general the experience will be like walking through a house you thought you knew intimately, and discovering that it has two or three rooms, perhaps more, you had somehow never discovered. You will be challenged constantly in the course of the KomFrag process, and your audience will not be satisfied with careless answers or evasions. But you will never be attacked, and most likely you will find the process exhilarating. The meeting will simultaneously last forever and be over in the blink of an eye. Afterward everyone will go out to dinner together.»

«When you come to Freiburg for your second and your third KomFrag meetings, you will know what to expect, and your new section of text and commentary will be much better than your first one. And then the process will begin again, and you will return home with more questions and ideas, ready to begin work on another draft and beginning to see the final shape of your book emerge.»