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Conference | Anonymity and Temporality

Dec 05, 2019 - Dec 07, 2019

A conference organised by the Cluster of Excellence 2020 "Temporal Communities" in cooperation with King's College London.

For premodern literatures, anonymity has often been considered the standard form in which texts are authored, while the named author has frequently been considered to be a product of (Western) modernity. European literatures, especially, have been seen as developing within a teleological framework which posits the named and clearly identifiable author as the logical end-point of a close-to-ineluctable historical development that coincides with the rise of industrial capitalism, bourgeois societies and modern subjectivity. Paradoxically, such a perspective has been reinforced rather than deconstructed by the poststructuralist onslaught on authorship (Barthes, Foucault).

Anonymity and Temporality seeks to explore a more specific perspective within a broader cultural framework. The central issue to be investigated is that of premodern literary anonymity's capacity for shaping temporalities – an issue to be addressed in a perspective that integrates Europe in a global perspective. Instead of seeing anonymity as a cultural given that simply occurs during a particular period in European literary history, we wish to conceive of it both as a specific cultural practice and a strategic resource that plays a central role in shaping temporalities.

Participants: Frank Bezner, Josh Davies, Anne Eusterschulte, Beatrice Gründler, Andrew James Johnston, Elke Koch, Clare A. Lees, David Matthews, Henry Ravenhall, Rachel Scott, Isabel Toral, Lawrence Warner

Further details and registration: peter.loeffelbein@fu-berlin.de

Programme

Thursday, December 5

14:30     Registration

15:00     Welcome address

15:30     Josh Davies
Names, Non-Names and Anonymity on, in and around the Franks Casket: History, Temporality and Community

16:30     Beatrice Gründler
Anonymity, Obscurity, and Silent Co-Authorship in
Kalīla and Dimna               

Friday, December 6

09:30     Clare A. Lees
Anonymity Effects: The Medieval in The Contemporary

10:30     Isabel Toral
Anonymity and authority: authorship in an Arabic encyclopedia of the tenth century

11:30     Coffee

12:00     Rachel Scott
Temporality and Identification in
Kalila wa-Dimna’s European Translations

13:00     Lunch

14:30     David Matthews
Fatherless Children: The Perils of Anonymity in the 1530s

15:30     Elke Koch
Truth and Faith. Naming and Anonymity in the context of witnessing and testimony

16:30     Coffee

17:00     Frank Bezner
Clerics without a Name? Anonymity and Medieval Latin (‘Secular’) Lyrics

Saturday, December 7

09:30     Andrew James Johnston
Anonymity Incarnate: the Scop in
Beowulf

10:30     Henry Ravenhall
The Untimely Speaker: Anonymity and Narrative Voice in BnF fr. 17177

11:30     Coffee

12:00     Lawrence Warner
The Gawain Poet Rewrites Middle English Studies: Anonymity and the MED 

13:00     Lunch

14:30     Anne Eusterschulte
Temporal Anonymity. Changing authorships in medieval textual traditions

15:30     Coffee

16:00 – 17:00     Final Panel Discussion

Time & Location

Dec 05, 2019 - Dec 07, 2019

Freie Universität Berlin
Seminarzentrum, Room L 116
Habelschwerdter Allee 45
14195 Berlin