The 12th Annual International Conference of

Taiwan Association of

Classic, Medieval and Renaissance Studies

 

At National Chi Nan University, Taiwan

19-20, October, 2018

 

Between Humanity and Divinity:

In Literature, Art, Religion and Culture

Call for Papers (February 28th, 2018 Due)

 

For three millennia, mythologies and religions have been the major inspirations of the Western literary and philosophical systems while literature and art, the important locus for their embodiment and voicing. Concepts involving the relationship between humanity and divinity have been proven crucial topics and subjects for literature and art. Deities as the object for retrospective and imaginative projections and the heaven/immortal realm and the hell/underworld as the extended, continual expansion of the human reality, these subjects have also been the inspiration for the literature and art, and the major source of momentum for a literary or art movement to happen.

The religions originated from the Abrahamic monotheistic system, including Judaism, Christianity and Islamism, have been struggling with and nourished by each other politically and culturally. The interaction has been embodied in the achievement in all fields of humanities as well as in the international relationship. In addition, similar situation happened between the Abrahamic monotheism and Greek mythology; in the past millennia, they were competitors for the supremacy in the literary system while at the same time they drew resources from each other.

One can neither ignore the influence from the east, including the Middle-East, India and, farther away and subtler yet no less significant, China through the Silk Road, and the contribution of cultural preservation by the Arab Empire in the Middle Ages of Europe. All these formed a shared basis for the endless creativity of generations of writers and artists—therefore, a worthier object for research.

Examining the relationship between humanity and divinity macroscopically, one will bound to find that almost all significant works, major or minor, be encompassed within the view. From a lingual-cultural angel, one finds that the undecipherable spectrum formed by the continuum of creativity/translation/adaptation/rewriting/creation proves the locus of the embodiment of this relationship. As the Tower of Babel fell, all languages spawned. Any classics or genres that survived for millennia had reappeared in different languages in different times. The very moment when it reincarnated in another language was more than often the beginning of a new relationship between the humanity and divinity and of a new and revolutionary concept: therefore, the opening of a new era.

One can trace back the course of a river, but the water has been changing all the time; a spring may start a river while a river is itself the spring of another river. From Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arab and all the later European languages, from gigantic masterpieces like Iliad, the Bible to short, delicate genres like the sonnet, they all have evolved and reincarnated in different languages and cultures and became the core of the literary tradition of another place and time. In a sense, translation took up the key position in the evolution and development of the literature and the art; under the existence of Homer, the Bible, the Greek philosophy and the Renaissance, there has always been translation, as the engine and the beacon for development and evolution.

In addition, translation can happen in forms other than a linguistic one; among different media, translation, adaptation, rewriting and creation formed too an multi-dimension spectrum, where whether the literature was embodied in the art and the history or the art and the history ignited the literature could no longer be distinguished. The development of any literary or art works often happened organically: a motif, a genre, after translation and adaptation and combined with non-linguistic factors, took on an unpredictable organic evolution, the true inspiration and multi-determination of which can only be rediscovered afterwards through thorough and systematic research.

To complicate the situation, globalization, though foregrounded in the late twentieth century, did not begin this late at all. As early as the West Han Dynasty (c. the 2nd to 1st centuries BC), the exchange had already began, not to mention many more ground-breaking interactions like the expansion of the Alexander Empire, which once covered part of north India, even bringing a Greco trend into the sculpture of Buddha. In the concept of the relationship between the humanity and divinity, as well as most concepts concerning literature, art, history and all humanities, there has been exchange and mutual nourishment as early as that. In a word, the relationship between humanity and divinity has occupied the core of the Western literary and art tradition, any issue and subject therein prove highly relevant for research.

 

Topics and subjects（but not exclusively）：

Between Humanity and Divinity

The formation of the image of deity

The evolution of the concept of being human

How philosophy treated the relation between humanity and divinity

The concepts of divinity of the classic Greek philosophers

Humanity and Superhumanity

Holy Imaginative or Imaginative Holiness

Literature or the Sacred Scripts

Humanity in the Greek and the Roman mythologies

 

After the Tower of Babel

Between the Literatures in the Vernaculars and Latin

After the Fall of Latin Babel

Epics in Different Contexts

The Dialogue between Humanity and Divinity: God’s Word in the Vernaculars

Translation as the Engine of Religious/Mythological Evolution

 

Transneissance

Migrating Poetry: From Sonetto to Sonnet

Translation and Transformation of Ovid
Masterpieces or Rewritten Masterpieces?

Homer in Rendition and Adaptation
On Translating Homer and Homer Translated

On Translating the Bible and the Bible Translated

Translation as in Renaissance

The untranslatability or, to be precise, non-translatability of the Koran

Between the translation of the Bible and the formation of the European languages

 

Out of the East

The Silk Road and the development of the Western art

The Islamic light in the Middle Ages

From Byzantium to Florence

Out of the China and the Arab Empire

After the Rise of the Arabic Language and Culture

The development of Persian literature under the classic Greek and Islamic traditions

Glimpses of Light from the Far Eastern World

 

Beyond Literature and Art

Historiography and Translation
Greek Philosophers Then and Now

Thoughts on Thoughts in Different Language
Literature in mythology and religion

Bible and Biblical Literature in Ancient Greece, Roman Empire, Middle Ages and Renaissance

Philosophy under/beyond Divinity

Struggle between and Amalgamation of Mythology and Religion

Greek Mythology Before and After Christianity

 

TACMRS warmly invites papers that reach beyond the traditional chronological and disciplinary borders of Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies. Please send your submission package to Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Chi-Nan University at tacmrs2018@gmail.com with a subject line stating Submission for the 12th TACMRS Conference by February 15th, 2018. This year panel proposals (groups of 3 or 4 persons) are welcome. This year, we also welcome presenters to use Chinese as their presentation language. If you wish to present in Chinese, please use Chinese to write the abstract. Also, we will provide 6 traveling grant for 6 postgraduate students. Each student will get 600 NTD. For submission procedure, please note the following:

 

Individual proposals should include the following items:

1. Title of the paper

2. Abstract (maximum 250 words for English abstracts and 500 words for Chinese abstracts, Microsoft Word format document)

3. Brief CV with a home or office mailing address, email address, phone and fax numbers

 

Panel proposals should include the following items:

1. Panel description and title

2. Contact details of panel organizer

3. Titles of papers and abstracts (maximum 250 words for English abstracts and 500 words for Chinese abstracts, Microsoft Word format document) and a brief CV of each scholar.

 

 

第12屆「台灣西洋古典、中世紀暨文藝復興學會

國際研討會」

訂於2018年10月19-20日舉行

國立暨南國際大學外國語文學系主辦

 

 

人神之間：

文學、藝術、宗教與文化的天人交接

[徵稿至2018年2月15日止]

 

三千年來神話與宗教一直是西方文學與思想體系的重要泉源，而文學藝術則是二者呈現及發聲的重要場域；涉及人神關係的概念，更是文學藝術極重要的課題與主題；而神袛做為人類自省與想像的投射，天堂地獄或仙界冥間做為現實人間的衍化延伸，向來也是文學藝術創作的靈感湶源與藝文潮流運動的重要動能來源。

西方最龐大也最悠久的亞伯拉罕一神教系統，即猶太教、基督教及伊斯蘭教的根源，數千年在政治文化上既相互競爭也相輔相成，其互動既體現於現實國際關係中，也在藝文史哲的作品裡。此外，亞伯拉罕一神教系統與希臘神話間，數千年來既各自發展，也彼此互涉影響，甚至也有相互爭競的情況，而宗教與哲學對人的本質的探索與關照，也同樣互爭又互濟。

東方來的影響，近者包括近東、印度，遠者如透過絲路而來的輸入，以及它作為緩衝保留的地區，如歐洲黑暗時期之大食帝國，千年以降，其影響與貢獻無法忽視。這一切形成歷代無數作品共享之底蘊，成為值得研究的重要對象。

以宏觀看人神關係，則文學藝術領域的成果，或近或遠都在視野之內了；從語言文化的角度來看，則創作/翻譯/改編/重寫/創作這個無法分割的寫作光譜，又是此關係的具體呈現場域之一。巴別塔傾，眾語乃生，西方任何傳承千載的經典或文類，都曾以不同語言呈現；文字轉換的那一刹那，常是人神關係及概念演變的開始，另一個時代的開啟。

但河雖可溯，卻非前水，源頭帶來大河，大河卻是另一個新源頭。從希伯來文、希臘文、拉丁文、阿拉伯文，到後起之歐洲各國語言，大自浩帙鉅作如《伊里亞德》、聖經，小從某種精簡文體如十四行詩等，都不斷在不同語言文化裡演變重生，成為某時空文化文學傳統的核心。因此，翻譯在文學藝術的演變進展佔有關鍵地位，荷馬、聖經、希臘哲學及文藝復興等形成經典或造就文藝宏業偉績，全都有翻譯活動在背後，做為發展與演變最重要的動力與指引。

此外，翻譯也同時以廣義的形式發生；在不同語言間、不同非語言的媒體間翻譯、改編、重寫、創作，構成多維的光譜，文學呈現於藝術與歷史、藝術與歷史孕育文學等等，並無清楚的界線分割任何兩者。文藝作品的發展也常呈現有機演化的現象，同一母題、文類，經過翻譯、改寫而在不同脈絡中與非語言的元素結合而產生難以逆料的有機演化，只有從事後的耙梳整理中，才能看出啟思發智的脈絡以及文學藝術歷史的豐厚多義。

讓情況更錯綜複雜的是，全球化雖是二十世紀後才凸顯的現象，並不表示這是二十世紀才發生。早自西漢，東西方即開始交流，更不用說亞力山大帝國曾包括部份印度，讓佛像藝術有過希臘古典風格的時期；故在人神關係的概念乃至於文史藝哲各方面，東西早有交流互濟。總而言之，西方文學藝術的源頭裡，人神關係位處其核心之核心，故有關人神關係的一切議題，正是文學藝術界亟需省視探索的領域。

 

 

 

議題包含（但不限於）：

 

人神之間

• 神祗形象之塑造

• 人之概念的流變

• 神聖文稿或是文學作品？

• 歷代從哲學看人神關係

• 希臘哲學家看人與神

• 基督教發生前後之希臘神話

 

巴別塔後

• 方言與拉丁文文學

-  拉丁文巴別塔傾之後

-  不同脈絡中的史詩

• 天人對話與文學：上帝講方言之前後

 

文譯復興

• 宗教文學與文學中的信仰

• 希臘神話故事在不同時代的演變

• 羅馬時期大師之翻譯與演迻

• 文藝復興與希臘神話

• 文藝復興與聖經翻譯

• 可蘭經的不可譯性，或禁譯性？

• 聖經翻譯與國族語言的形成

• 荷馬的翻譯與改寫

• 遷移動的詩體：從短歌到十四行

 

東來影響

- 絲路與西方藝文之發展

- 黑暗時期中的回教之光

- 從拜占庭到翡冷翠

- 漢唐與羅馬大食

- 阿拉伯語文文化興起之後

- 古希臘、伊斯蘭傳統下的古波斯文學發展

 

 

 

藝文之外

• 史詩之文學地位

• 文學、哲學、神學之關係與互動

• 文學中的聖經與聖經中的文學

• 思想與不同語言之思想史

• 希臘哲人之今昔

• 視覺媒體中的人神關係呈現

• 纂史與譯史

 

台灣西洋古典、中世紀暨文藝復興學會旨在促進、整合跨越古典、中世紀與文藝復興三時期之研究，誠摯邀稿，希冀藉此打破傳統學科之分界。敬請於2018年2月15日前，將摘要寄至國立暨南國際大學外國語文學系 tacmrs2018@gmail.com，並在信件標題說明「第12屆台灣西洋古典、中世紀暨文藝復興國際研討會投稿摘要」；全文截稿時間為2018年8月1日。本屆開放3至4人一組的panel投稿形式，送審資料參見下方文字說明。本屆年會亦接受以中文發表之稿件。如欲以中文發表，投稿時請以中文撰寫摘要。此外，本次會議將補助六名碩博士生交通經費每人六百元。歡迎各位研究生多多投稿。

 

個人送審摘要需包括：

1.　論文標題、摘要 (英文最多250字，中文最多500字Word.doc格式)

2.　簡歷(所屬單位職稱)，並含通訊地址、電郵、電話或傳真號碼

Panel投稿送審資料包括：

1.　Panel description及panel title

2.　Panel籌組人聯絡資料

3.　各篇論文標題、摘要 (英文最多250字，中文最多500字Word.doc格式) 及每位發表者簡歷(所屬單位職稱)，並含通訊地址、電郵、電話或傳真號碼