{"id":310,"date":"2014-10-13T14:22:11","date_gmt":"2014-10-13T14:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/world-literature\/?page_id=310"},"modified":"2014-12-10T21:12:23","modified_gmt":"2014-12-10T21:12:23","slug":"world-literature-colloquium-series-2014-2015","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/world-literature\/world-literature-colloquium-series-2014-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"World Literature Colloquium Series 2014-2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hic Sunt Dracones: Deep Edges in Eliade, Tolstoy, and Atwood<\/strong>
\nBy Sarah Gridley, Associate Professor of English at CWRU
\nMonday, October 20, 4:30pm
\nClark Hall 2014<\/p>\n

This talk will attempt to track two kinds of chaos monsters\u2014sea serpents and snakes\u2014through two poems, one fable, and one consecration ritual. Drawing on a term paper she wrote as a student in Timothy Beal\u2019s RLGN 445 course, Gridley\u2019s monster-searching will range all over the map: from the axis mundi of a foundation stone in India, to the bottom of a Russian well, to depths of the Canadian wilderness and the Underworld beneath it. Must we repeat more and more insistent forms of cosmos- and ego-building in response to depth, disorientation, and dissolution\u2014or how might literature and religion help us meet our \u2018chaos monsters\u2019 less defensively? Gridley invites colloquium participants to join her in pursuing this question through various examples of World Literature.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Magic, Fable, and Opera: Monteverdi and the Quest for Immortality
\n<\/strong>By\u00a0<\/strong>Vladimir Marchenkov,\u00a0Professor of Aesthetics and Theory at the School of Interdisciplinary Arts at Ohio University
\nWednesday, November 5, 6:00pm
\nGuilford Hall 323<\/p>\n

A remarkable milestone in the history of the myth about Orpheus and Eurydice, Claudio Monteverdi and Alessandro Striggio\u2019s 1607 favola in musica<\/em> L\u2019Orfeo<\/em> was the product of two definitive Renaissance cultural currents: humanism and magic. Both were fuelled by fascination with ancient myth, albeit in very different keys. While humanism cultivated myth as allegory, magicians dreamed of harnessing music\u2019s hidden powers for their own ends. L\u2019Orfeo <\/em>registered both these trends, and blended them together in a groundbreaking artistic statement, laying the foundation of both modern opera and the modern artistic Orphism. The continuing vitality of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth owes much to the modern idea of conquest of nature that culminates in triumph over death as nature\u2019s ultimate limit to man\u2019s omnipotence. Marchenkov will conclude his presentation with a performance of his recent composition, \u201cTo Night,\u201d from a song cycle based on the Orphic Hymns <\/em>(2nd<\/sup> century A.D.).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mysticism East and West, Ancient and Modern<\/strong>
\nWednesday, December 3, \u00a04:30 pm
\nClark Hall 206<\/p>\n

The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy<\/em>, 2nd<\/sup> ed., defines mysticism as \u201cBelief in union with the divine nature by means of ecstatic contemplation, and belief in the power of spiritual access to ultimate reality, or to domains of knowledge closed off to ordinary thought. Also applied derogatorily to theories that assume occult qualities or agencies of which no empirical or rational account can be offered.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the concise, two-part definition in the ODP2<\/sup><\/em> offers the general reader a working definition, nevertheless it points to a bifurcated understanding of the term. On the one hand, mysticism emerges as a way in which humankind and God might unite, perhaps to transcend unimportant, mundane concerns and enjoy cosmic consciousness; but on the other hand, one is warned that mysticism might be an irrational construct connected with magic and groundless belief in the supernatural.<\/p>\n

The semester\u2019s final meeting of the World Literature Colloquium will examine in a roundtable setting the topic of mysticism. Participants will consider the meaning of the term \u201cmysticism\u201d in both Western and Eastern literature and civilization along with several major figures and their writings as they relate to mysticism. Participants include (in alphabetical order) Florin Berindeanu (Classics and World Literature), Takao Hagiwara (Modern Languages), Denna Iammarino (SAGES\/English), and Timothy Wutrich (Classics).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Viewpoint Blends<\/strong>
\nBy Mark Turner,\u00a0Institute Professor of Cognitive Science at CWRU
\nWednesday, January 28, 2015, 5:00pm
\nClark Hall 206<\/p>\n

A participant in any scene of communication is embodied, and so has a viewpoint. An individual person is in a particular spot, in a particular time, with a particular perceptual focus and attention. If I say, \u201cI can help you now by looking here,\u201d what I have said is unintelligible unless you understand something about my viewpoint, and accordingly what I might mean by \u201cI,\u201d \u201cyou,\u201d \u201cnow,\u201d and \u201chere,\u201d words that could mean many different things in different situations, depending on the viewpoint of the person who says them. All languages have many expressions for expressing viewpoint, but they also have plenty of expressions for expressing blends<\/i> of viewpoint. \u201cI will come to your party\u201d takes the \u201cI\u201d from the viewpoint of the speaker but the \u201ccome\u201d from the viewpoint of the addressee. Literary texts frequently use pyrotechnic constructions of blended viewpoint. This talk will present types of blended viewpoint in language, literature, and media.<\/div>\n
\n
\"\"<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hic Sunt Dracones: Deep Edges in Eliade, Tolstoy, and Atwood<\/strong>
\nBy Sarah Gridley, Associate Professor of English at CWRU
\nMonday, October 20, 4:30pm
\nClark Hall 2014<\/p>\n

This talk will attempt to track two kinds of chaos monsters\u2014sea serpents and snakes\u2014through two poems, one fable, and one consecration ritual. Drawing on a term paper she wrote as a student in Timothy Beal\u2019s RLGN 445 course, Gridley\u2019s monster-searching will range all over the map: from the axis mundi of a foundation stone in India, to the bottom of a Russian well, to depths of the Canadian wilderness and the Underworld beneath it.<\/p>\n

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