Symposium: Dante's Pluringualism (Berlin, April 2-4)

AUTHORITY, VULGARIZATION, SUBJECTIVITY

Symposium: Dante's Pluringualism: Authority, Vulgarization, Subjectivity
ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry, April 2-4, 2009
Organizers: Sara Fortuna, Manuele Gragnolati, Jürgen Trabant

"Already in 1929 Erich Auerbach highlighted the innovative character of Dante's oeuvre which, in contrast with its traditional interpretation as the culmination and summa of a medieval Weltanschauung, he associated with a modern representation of the human being in its individuality and historical reality. This conference gathers scholars from different disciplines (literary studies, history, linguistics, philosophy, queer theory, theatre) to discuss the role that language plays for Dante. In particular, the question with which this conference engages is to what extent Dante’s linguistic theory and praxis, which can be understood in terms of a strenuous defense of the vernacular language, in tension with the prestige of Latin, both informs and reflects a new constellation of authority, knowledge and identity, which is imbued with a significant element of subjectivity and opens up towards modernity. The conference will also include a dialogue with Giorgio Pressburger on his recent Nel regno oscuro and a performance based on Dante and Pasolini."

Participants: Albert Russell Ascoli (Berkeley), Zygmunt Baranski (Cambridge), Emma Bond (Oxford), Gary Cestaro (Chicago), Sara Fortuna (Berlin), Stefano Gensini (Roma), Carlo Ginzburg (Pisa), Manuele Gragnolati (Oxford, Berlin), Agnese Grieco (Berlin), Ruedi Imbach (Paris), Giulio Lepschy (Cambridge), Laura Lepschy (London, Cambridge), Bettina Lindorfer (Berlin), Elena Lombardi (Bristol), Franco Lo Piparo (Palermo), Lino Pertile (Harvard), Giorgio Pressburger (Trieste), Irène Rosier-Catach (Paris), Francesca Southerden (Oxford), Mirko Tavoni (Pisa), Jürgen Trabant (Berlin, Bremen).