The Durham-based ERC/UKRI-funded research project, "Aristoteles Pezographos: The Writing Styles of Aristotle and their Contribution to the Evolution of Greek Prose", invites proposals, especially from Early Career Researchers and postgraduate students, for papers to be delivered at our international conference, "Philomythia: Aristotle’s Use of Previous Literatures", on June 16th to 17th 2026, at Durham University.

Aristotle wrote in his Metaphysics that philomuthoi people are in a sense philosophers; elsewhere he confided that when he became more solitary, he became ever more fond of muthoi, the old stories, which haunt many of his treatises and fragments, along with stylistic echoes and more subterranean allusions. While Plato’s literary models, quotations and allusions have been intensively investigated, Aristotle’s immersion in other writers and genres in treatises other than his Poetics and Art of Rhetoric has been, with some exceptions, largely overlooked. We welcome proposals on all authors and genres, including proverbs and medical writings, or on literary presences in individual treatises by Aristotle. Please send an abstract of 250-300 words to the Principal Investigator, edith.hall@durham@ac.uk, by December 1st 2025.