Marie-Luce Demonet (Pr émérite – CESR, Université de Tours) interviendra le 30 mai à 16h30 autour de Rabelais à l’occasion des conférences Le Studium organisées les 30 & 31 mai 2018, au CESR de Tours, dans le cadre des journées :

“Transcultural Mediterranean: in search of non-orthodox and non-hegemonic universalism(s)”.

Rabelais’s encounter with Adam: naming world culture
Pr Marie-Luce Demonet

Abstract

In his Lives of Gargantua and Pantagruel, Rabelais combined the fantastic imagination of oriental legends, of Indo-European myths, of classical Antiquity and Renaissance scholarship, using a vernacular French stuffed with linguistic borrowings and inventions. His curiosity went far beyond his native country, and his interest for Mediterranean, Middle-, Far-East and New World cultures is noteworthy. He played with the art of transforming actual history and places into shareable worlds of fiction, in which Adamic language plays a major part: it is no more a divine idiom, but a transcultural blending of human emotions. He was aware of the new power of the written word, and of the book: the printing technique and the paper made of hemp and linen were Chinese, the paper mills imported from Middle East developed in Northern Italy: no activity was more international than printing and selling books. Nevertheless Rabelais shows elements of “intangible” culture, non-written literature, calendar festivals, pre-Christian and oriental cults and rites. Several tales imbedded in the Lives belong to the aural world literature, to which we can add the rich tradition of apocryphal Gospels and Bible, several versions of them of rabbinic, gnostic or Manichean origin. He names the towers of Theleme in a parody of Adam’s naming of the world with the four cardinal points, adding two more directions that manifest his own creative imagination.

Conférences, Le Studium Loire Valley, Institute for Advanced Sudies

Transcultural Mediterranean: in search of non-orthodox and non-hegemonic universalism(s)

Convenors
Dr Ewa Anna Łukaszyk, LE STUDIUM/Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow
FROM University of Warsaw – PL IN RESIDENCE AT Centre for Advanced Studies in the Renaissance (CESR) / CNRS, University of Tours – FR
Pr Marie-Luce Demonet,
Centre for Advanced Studies in the Renaissance (CESR) / CNRS, University of Tours – FR

Scientific Committee
Pr Marie-Luce Demonet, Centre for Advanced Studies in the Renaissance (CESR) – FR
Pr Marek Dziekan, University of Lodz – PL
Dr Ewa Łukaszyk, University of Warsaw – PL

INTRODUCTION

The aim of this conference is to create a space of discussion concerning the transcultural dimension of the Mediterranean understood as a region defined, in the first place, by the phenomena of exchange and circulation of ideas. The Mediterranean crossroad between Europe, Middle East and Africa, fully established already at the end of Antiquity, takes a new shape at the brink of late Middle Ages and early Modernity.
The proposed approach is to identify the spheres of interference between the Islamic and Christian worlds (contemplated in their plurality and mutual inter-penetrability). Tracing a relation between culturally locatable origins and the hypothetical transcultural consequences of such processes of interference, we might come to important conclusions, valid not only for the history of ideas as an academic discipline, but also for the contemporary perception of the shared Mediterranean heritage.

The transcultural hypothesis the organizers would like to propose as a discussion topic
deals with the aspiration of transcending the cultural and confessional division, undoubtedly predominating in the Mediterranean world during the contemplated period (that may be taken as broadly as going from the 11th to the 17th century). Many European and Mediterranean figures, such as Ibn Arabi, Ramon Llull, Guillaume Postel or John Dee appear to have fallen in the temptation of moving into the interstices between the culturally established and delimited orthodoxies. By what spiritual and intellectual means did they attempt to inhabit those unstable zones? Did they leave behind any blueprint of a non-hegemonic universalism that might be recuperated in our times, helping to build a harmonious future of the region? Is there a diagram of transgressive relationships across the plurality of cultures, denominations and intellectual traditions to be read in the variegated Mediterranean heritage?

PROGRAMME

WEDNESDAY 30^TH MAY 2018

14h30 Welcome coffee & registration
15h00 Official Opening: Sophie Gabillet (Le Studium) & Pr Marie-Luce Demonet (CESR, University of Tours)
15h30 Pr György Szönyi – Enoch/Idris, Postel, and the Universal Reform
16h30 Pr Marie-Luce Demonet – Rabelais’ encounter with Adam: naming world
culture
17h30 Discussion & Coffee break

18h30 Pr Josep Enric Rubio Albarracín – Ramon Llull, ou comment communiquer avec
l’autre | Public lecture in French, LE STUDIUM LECTURE

ThursDAY 31^TH MAY 2018

08h45 Welcome coffee
09h00 Dr Joanna Gorecka-Kalita – The Hermit and the Maiden. The longevity of a transcultural topos
10h00 Pr Stefan SperlIn – Search of Harmony. Reflections on the Transcultural Dimension of Neoplatonism
10h50 Discussion & Coffee break
11h30 Dr Michela Salsano – The influence of Aristotle’s Arabian commentators on the philosophy of Scholasticism and first Humanism
12h30 Lunch
15h00 Dr Patricia Benstein – The concept of the divine and the perfect human being in the doctrine of Ibn Arabi (online from Australia)
16h00 Dr Natalia Wawrzyniak – Seven Wise Men and a Friendly Exchange: Universalism as a Mediterranean Tale
17h00 Discussion & Coffee break
17h30 Dr Ewa Lukaszyk – What is the concept of the transcultural Mediterranean for?
18h30 Closing remarks

> Télécharger le programme complet (PDF)
> Télécharger les abstracts (PDF)