Secondly, we would
like to announce to you that the University of Leuven, Belgium, is going to
hold a conference with the title “Authority Revisited – Towards Thomas More and
Erasmus in 1516”. The meeting will take place from the 30th of
November to the 3rd of December 2016. Papers are invited on a
number of relevant topics (listed below). Abstracts of approximately 300 words
are to be submitted until the 15th
of January 2016. Read the full description of the Lectio International
Conference and the full Call for Papers:
In the year 1516, two
crucial texts for the cultural history of the West saw the light:
Thomas More’s Utopia
and Desiderius Erasmus’s Novum Instrumentum. Both of these works
dealt freely with
authoritative sources of western civilization and opened new pathways of
thought on the eve of
invasive religious and political changes.
Lectio and the
University of Leuven, in collaboration with its RefoRC-partners the
Johannes a Lasco
Library Emden and the Europäische Melanchthon Akademie Bretten as well as
other partners, will
mark the 500th birthday of both foundational texts by organizing a
conference, from
November 30 through December 2, 2016. The university city of Leuven is a
most appropriate
place to have this conference organized, since it was intimately involved in
the
genesis and the
history of both works.
The conference will
be devoted to studying not only the reception and influence of Utopia and
the Novum
Instrumentum in (early) modern times, but also their precursors in
classical
antiquity, the
patristic period, and the middle ages. The conference will thus lead to a
better
understanding of how
More and Erasmus used their sources, and it will address the more
encompassing question
of how these two authors, through their own ideas and their use of
authoritative texts,
have contributed to the rise of modern western thought.
The conference also
explicitly aims at enhancing our understanding of iconographic, book-, and
art-historical
aspects of the transmission of the texts under consideration, both before and
after
the publication of
the two works.
This
multidisciplinary Lectio conference wants to bring together international
scholars working
in the field of
theology, art history, philosophy, history of science and historical
linguistics.
THOMAS MORE: UTOPIA REVISITED
More’s colorful
description of the allegedly recently discovered island of
Utopia was so influential as to lend its
name to a literary genre. At the same
time, although the
name Utopia is a neologism invented in More's circle ,
the utopian tradition
reaches back to antiquity.
Papers are invited
on the following
topics:
The best known
examples from classical antiquity are Plato’s descriptions of the ideal
state.
Yet there are other
instances, such as the myth of the golden age, elaborated in many different
ways by numerous
ancient writers. In addition, More had a thorough knowledge of the works by
Greek and Roman
thinkers such as Plutarch, Lucian, Cicero, and Seneca. The conference aims to
map these ancient
representations of the ideal state and to study the way in which More was
influenced by them.
Equally influential
is the Christian tradition, most prominently laid down in Augustine’s
City of God, a text of central importance that
marks the transition from antiquity to the middle
ages. Augustine’s
eschatological view of the perfect City may, for example, be the subject of
contributions to the
conference. By extension, the various forms of the mythical account of
Cockaigne enter the
picture as possible topics.
Also of direct impact
on Utopia were reports about the New World (for example in the
letters of Amerigo
Vespucci, Christopher Columbus, or Peter Martyr of Anghiera) and the images
of the New World in
Europe. It would be an interesting contribution to the conference to study
in which ways the
discovery and description of an “unspoiled” world and its inhabitants inspired
More’s views.
Renaissance
humanists also
influenced More’s Utopia. The most renowned example is, of
course, Erasmus. But
the views of other humanists, like Pico della Mirandola, also shaped More’s
thought. Similarly,
the scholastic tradition deserves to be studied in at this juncture.
Renaissance humanism
and scholasticism were difficult to reconcile, according to More, and on
more than one
occasion he sets one over against the other.
The conference shall
also pay due attention to the reception of Utopia in early modern
times, both in the vernacular and in
Latin. Authors such as Tommaso Campanella, Vasco de
Quiroga, Francis
Bacon, Johann Eberlin, Kaspar Stiblin, and Johann Valentin Andreae may be
investigated in this
regard, as well as the genre of the picaresque novel.
Of particular
interest are iconographic, book-, and art-historical aspects of the
transmission of Utopia
as well as the works of More’s predecessors.
ERASMUS: THE NEW TESTAMENT REVISITED
Erasmus’s revision of
the New Testament text was groundbreaking. Obviously,
however, Erasmus’s
foundational work cannot be properly understood apart
from his
predecessors’ endeavors to translate the Bible and to comment on it,
or to deal with the
Bible from a text-critical perspective.
Papers are invited
on the following
topics:
Papers studying
biblical exegesis in Christian antiquity and its reception in the works
by
Erasmus. More in
particular, paper topics may include Jerome’s Vulgata, Origen’s Hexapla, and
relevant commentaries
on Scripture, such as those of Chrysostom and others. Erasmus’s
recourse to classical
language and culture in the Annotationes to his New Testament may
also
be the subject of
paper proposals.
Medieval biblical
exegesis: Even
though self-declared pioneers like Erasmus and the
Renaissance humanists
were not keen to be associated with medieval biblical exegesis, this
aspect of possible
influences and sources cannot be neglected. The conference invites
contributions on the
biblical Renaissance of the twelfth century and later (among others, the
Glossa ordinaria, Hugh of St. Victor and the
Parisian Victorines, Peter Comestor, Peter Cantor and
Stephen Langton, Hugh
of St. Cher and Nicholas of Lyra). In sum, the conference aims to explore
the extent to which
Erasmus and his fellow humanists integrated the progress made by medieval
biblical exegesis.
The link between
Erasmus and Renaissance humanism, both in northern Europe (Agricola,
Cornelius Gerardi
Aurelius) and in Italy (Lorenzo Valla, Gianozzo Manetti). The main question is
here how Erasmus’s
Christian humanism did relate to the broader cultural historical current of
renewed textual
criticism.
The reception of
Erasmus’s text-critical and exegetical work in the early modern era will
be
explored through the
establishment of (new) authoritative version(s) of the New Testament and
the debates that
accompanied the process (Novum Instrumentum, Vulgata, Textus
Receptus) as
well as the
elaboration of humanist, Protestant, and Catholic exegesis, from Luther
and
Melanchthon through
Beza, from Dorpius, Franciscus Lucas Brugensis and Jansenius
Gandavensis, via
Estienne, Arias Montanus, through Maldonatus, etc. We further look forward to
receiving papers on
how Erasmus’ New Testament was used in the development of early
modern vernacular
versions, on all sides of the confessional spectrum.
Of particular
interest are iconographic, book-, and art-historical aspects of the
transmission of the
texts, both of Erasmus’s predecessors and of Erasmus’s Novum
Instrumentum.
Papers may be given in English or French
and the presentation should take 20 minutes.
To submit a
proposal, please send an abstract of approximately 300 words (along with your
name, academic
affiliation and contact information) to lectio@kuleuven.be by January 15, 2016.
Notification of
acceptance will be given by the end of March 2016.
The publication of
selected papers is planned in a volume to be included in the peer-reviewed
LECTIO Series
(Brepols Publishers).
Invited speakers
Gillian Clark (University
of Bristol), Henk Jan De Jonge (Leiden University), Günter Frank
(Europäische
Melanchthon Akademie), Brad Gregory (University of Notre Dame), Quentin
Skinner (Queen Mary
University of London)
Venue of the
Conference
The Leuven Institute
for Ireland in Europe, Janseniusstraat 1, 3000 Leuven
Organizing
committee
Erik De Bom, Anthony
Dupont, Wim François, Jan Papy, Marleen Reynders, Andrea Robiglio,
Violet Soen, Gerd Van
Riel
Scientific
committee
Rita Beyers (U Antwerpen), Erik De Bom (KU Leuven), Wim
François (KU Leuven), Günter Frank
(Europäische Melanchthon Akademie, Bretten), Jill Kraye
(The Warburg Institute), Oswyn
Murray (Oxford), Jan
Papy (KU Leuven), Andrea Robiglio (KU Leuven), Herman Selderhuis
(Johannes a Lasco
Bibliothek, Emden), Violet Soen (KU Leuven), Gerd Van Riel (KU Leuven), Wim
Verbaal (U Gent)
CONTACT
LECTIO KU Leuven
Faculties of Arts,
Law, Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies
Blijde Inkomststraat 5
3000 Leuven
BELGIUM
+32 16 328778
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