Language in Motion
Editing, Translating and Adapting Medieval and Early Modern Theoretical Writing on Language
The 51st Conference on Editorial Problems
FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO REGISTER, VISIT WWW.LANGUAGEINMOTION.UTORONTO.CA
If you have an accommodation need, please contact jill.ross@utoronto.ca by 11 November 2016.
The main goal of this workshop is to encourage a transcultural discussion of how premodern theoretical writing about language travels in terms both of geography and time, and to contribute to a nascent expansion of the premodern beyond traditional Eurocentric boundaries. The papers explore problems of translation, multilingualism and cultural identity that arise from linguistic practices in a variety of premodern contexts, and will generate comparative, cross-cultural dialogue about the opportunities and problems presented by the editing, translation or adaptation of theoretical texts on language, a phenomenon both modern and premodern.
In order to achieve this goal, a dynamic group of scholars from a variety of fields within Medieval and Early Modern Studies will gather for a two-day workshop at the University of Toronto in order to explore and discuss how the normative Latin and Romance textual cultures of premodern Europe may be brought into a conversation with ideas about language and philological practices in cultures ranging from twelfth-century Japan, seventeenth-century Mughal India, the medieval Islamicate world, and Hebrew language culture in fifteenth-century Iberia, a range that is striking in its diversity.
Program
Friday, 18 November 2016
1:30-2:00
Fred Unwalla (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies): Welcoming Remarks
Jill Ross (University of Toronto): Language in Motion. Introductory Remarks
2:00-3:00
Rita Copeland (University of Pennsylvania): Retrospective Editing
3:00-4:00
Simon Gaunt (King’s College London): Locating the Text in Motion: Why Edit Manuscripts Rather than Texts?
4:00-5:00
Jeannie Miller (University of Toronto): Al-Jahiz’s Two Aristotles
Saturday, 19 November 2016
9:00-9:30 Coffee and Muffins
9:30-10:30
Arthur Dudney (University of Cambridge): Multilingualism and the Translatio studii from Persian to Urdu
10:30-11:30
(Chair: Chris Piuma, University of Toronto)
Jill Ross (University of Toronto): The Conversion of Poetry: Poetics and Cultural Identity in a Late Medieval Hebrew Rhyming Dictionary from the Crown of Aragon
11:30-12:30
David Lurie (Columbia University): Poetry Commentary and the Vernacularization of Chinese Philology in Early Medieval Japan”
12:30-2:00 Lunch
2:00-3:00
Alexander Key (Stanford University): Small Sets of (Very Important) Interrelated Terms in Eleventh-Century Arabic
3:00-3:30 Coffee break
3:30-4:30
Simone Ventura (King’s College London): The Scribe as Linguist in the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César’s Textual Tradition
4:30-5:30
Martin Camargo (University of Illinois, Champagne-Urbana): The Critical Edition as Procrustean Bed? Two Case Histories from the Fourteenth-Century Oxford Renaissance of Rhetoric
For more information please contact Professor Jill Ross (jill.ross@utoronto.ca)
We graciously acknowledge support from the Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies; the Centre for South Asian Studies and the Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs; the Conference on Editorial Problems, St. Michael’s College; the Department of French; the Centre for Medieval Studies; the Northrop Frye Centre; the Centre for Comparative Literature; the Institute of Islamic Studies, University of Toronto; the Centre for the Study of France and the Francophone World; the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations; the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies; and the Department of East Asian Studies.