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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture RECEPTION AND THE GIFT OF BEAUTY in the Western Tradition Institute of Greece, Rome, and the Classical Tradition, University of Bristol, 8-9 July 2010 Keynote Speaker: Professor William Desmond, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Reception has become an important and influential approach to researching and teaching Classical literature, and it has wider implications. By emphasizing the text as object in process, a dialogue between those working on reception theory and gift-theory could help move the discussion on. Research on Classical literature and gift-giving has tended to focus less on texts than on their contexts, but investigating the composition of text as gift as it both gives meanings to and receives meanings from social contexts, artistic and religious practices, and interpretive approaches helps us understand how these texts are composed and received. The aesthetic turn in gift theory is focused by the phrase 'the gift of beauty'. This conference is being called to explore the claim that the concept and experience of beauty are essential to understanding and creating texts. It will consider how research into texts as gifts of beauty complements the answers drawn from theological, historical, anthropological, and sociological approaches. In Cicero’s skeptical consideration of divination, the perception and reception of natural beauty involves the compulsion to respond which is characteristic of gift-exchange: “…the order of celestial things and the beauty of the universe compel me to confess that there is some excellent and eternal Being which deserves the respect and homage of the human race.” As well as the compulsion to reciprocate, gift-theory offers other ideas important to the perception and creation of beauty: difference and delay in reciprocity and the image as gift and return-gift, the sublime and/ or beauty as ‘saturated phenomenon’, gift as object and subject and the ambiguity of beauty, etc. Proposals for papers for this conference are warmly welcomed. Topics could include gift-exchange dramatized in differing images of sacrifice or friendship, the perception and construction of ‘decus’ as both beauty and glory in evocations of patronage situations or monuments, aspects of excess, decadence, and hyperbole, rhetorical copia and the response to beauty by creating textual beauty, l’ecriture feminine, composition as gift, and beauty and the body, or translation or allusion as modes of exchanging beauty. This conference is part of the 'Thinking Reciprocity' series and will be followed directly by the conference ‘Desiring the Text, Touching the Past: Towards an Erotics of Reception’ (Bristol, 10 July 2010). Reduced fees will be offered to people attending both conferences. Papers should be no more than 30 minutes in length. Abstracts should be submitted by 1 February 2010 and should be 300 words long. If you have any queries or wish to submit an abstract, please contact Stephen D’Evelyn at: [log in to unmask] ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html