Agolli & the Critics: A case study of overfitting in Modern Greek literary theory
Date and Time
Location
MODERN GREEK STUDIES
SPEAKER: Eno Agolli, PhD candidate at Rutgers University
Overfitting is a scientific term of art. It describes a model or theory that clings too tightly to specific examples, making it unable to handle new or different cases. Attempts have been made lately in the world of Modern Greek literary theory which, in my view, overfit many authors into an analytical framework where not all of them belong, resulting in a narrow and overly specific interpretation that doesn’t generalize well. I will read extensively from my poetry as well as certain reviews of it made by critics, often in anthological contexts, to exemplify this phenomenon and I will briefly propose ways to guard against it.
About the speaker
Eno Agolli was born in Albania and raised in Greece. He moved to the US in 2012, to study philosophy at the University of Chicago. He is currently a PhD candidate in Philosophy at Rutgers University. He has published two books of poetry in Greek: Poiitiko Aitio (Poetic Cause), in 2015, and Paraksena Frouta pou Kremontai (Strange Fruit Hanging), in 2023. He won the Varveris Prize for emerging poets in 2016. He lives in Connecticut.