The deadline for paper proposals for this conference has been extended to 15 January 2019. Please note that the conference will have a focus on the reception ("uses") of the Divan, but interpretations of Goethe's texts are also welcome.
Persian Imaginary:
Goethe's 'West-Eastern Divan' and its Uses
London, 10-11 October 2019
The year 2019 will mark the 200th anniversary of the first edition of Goethe's West-oestlicher Divan. It will also be a quarter-century since the appearance of Hendrik Birus's pioneering edition of the work in over 2000 pages, more than sixty of which were devoted to a bibliography of sources and scholarship on the Divan. This mass of scholarship has not discouraged further work: since 1994, at least fifty further pieces of scholarship on the Divan and its reception have appeared. And yet it is safe to say that this rich and enigmatic work is open to ever more probing readings. The text itself continues to provide rich material for interpretation. More recently, the uses of the Divan in both East and West - not all of them rigorous - have moved to the forefront of attention.
The English Goethe Society invites scholars to examine these issues in a two-day symposium on the Divan on 10-11 October 2019 in London. We are very pleased that two leading researchers on the Divan have agreed to deliver keynote lectures: Hendrik Birus and Andrea Polaschegg. We invite proposals on all aspects of the work. We would particularly welcome papers on its reception. Out of Goethe's imagined Persia - and his imagining of himself as a Muslim - emerges a host of questions, some of them addressing Iranian imaginings of Goethe and his poetic work. How has the Divan inspired writers in both East and West? Did the National Socialist valorisation of Goethe's 'sure instinct' in focussing on an 'Aryan' culture play a role in post-war views of Goethe? How does the Divan intersect with today's troubling questions of postcolonial migration, religious strife and warfare? Does the work provide an implicit challenge to 'official' Iranian interpretations of the homoerotic implications of Hafiz's Divan as symbolic? What are the implications of the work as a figure of rapprochement between East and West embodied in the 2000 Weimar visit of the Iranian president, Mohammad Chatami, and the monument representing Hafiz and Goethe? Does Goethe's Divan project break with 'colonialist intentions and hegemonial interests', as Chatami stated, and as Edward Said suggested in the preface to a 2003 reprint of his celebrated book Orientalism?
These are just a few of the questions that the symposium might address. It will be held at Senate House of the University of London, near Russell Square in the Bloomsbury district. One-page proposals for papers of 30 minutes in German or English should be sent by 15 January 2019 to the undersigned. Participants from abroad are asked to apply to their universities or to bodies such as the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for travel funds to London. Costs of accommodation as well as some travel will be met by the EGS. A selection of papers will be invited for submission to a special issue of Publications of the English Goethe Society, which could also be submitted for possible publication in the Special Issue as Books scheme of our publisher, Routledge. For further information, please contact one of the undersigned.
Kevin Hilliard ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>)
Astrid Kohler ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>)
W. Daniel Wilson ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>)
www.englishgoethesociety.org<http://www.englishgoethesociety.org>
W. Daniel Wilson
Professor of German
Co-editor, Publications of the English Goethe Society
School of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures
Royal Holloway, University of London
www.tinyurl.com/w-daniel-wilson<http://www.tinyurl.com/w-daniel-wilson>
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Postal address:
7 Queen's Road
Twickenham
TW1 4EZ
UK
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