Lyric Communities

WORKSHOP

Idee und Organisation: Nicolas Longinotti (Freie Universität Berlin), Dr. Laura Banella (University of Notre
Dame) und Dr. Francesco Giusti (University of Oxford)

In englischer Sprache

In Zusammenarbeit mit dem Center for Italian Studies – University of Notre Dame, der Oxford Berlin
Research Partnership, dem Exzellenzcluster EXC 2020 „Temporal Communities“ und dem Dahlem Humanities Center

Sociological research has demonstrated how communities enact mechanisms to claim internal coherence and distinguish themselves from the outside. Lyric poetry can act as a privileged community-building mechanism in different respects: it can entail forms of protest within the same Gesellschaft, the creation of new languages within and beyond the national, the conquest of gendered spaces within traditions, the agonistic claim involved in imitation. Through lyric poetry, various forms of community formation can not only claim their coherence and consistency, but also powerfully demarcate boundaries and establish differences. The recent scholarly debate on lyric poetry has proposed transhistorical approaches based on the lyric genre’s unique performative features, potential of circulation, re-use and re-enactment of models and gestures. The workshop sets out to explore the potential of lyric poetry in imagining and enabling communities when representing conflict, enacting moments of tension, and creating outsiders, from the Middle Ages to the contemporary era from a global perspective.

The workshop Rethinking Lyric Communities in the Early Modern, held at Christ Church (Oxford) in 2023, discussed transhistorical and transnational communities addressing questions of exegesis, the circulation of manuscripts and printed editions, and forms of collective writing and performance. This workshop aims to focus on the double-edged dimension of community formations, arguing that enabling communities involves internal and external conflicts to circumscribe and exclude other collective formations. The complex dynamics between conflict and assent will be explored through the transnational re-creation or epigonal re-use of traditional forms, the emergence of minorities in the public sphere and in national literary traditions, the transcription and publication of oral performances, and the emergence of queer identities.

In cooperation with: Center for Italian Studies – University of Notre Dame; Dahlem Humanities Center; EXC 2020 Temporal Communities; Italienzentrum – Freie Universität Berlin; Oxford Berlin Research Partnership.

DAY ONE

Thursday 27 June, Seminarzentrum L115-L116 (Otto-von-Simson-Str. 26)

10:30-10:45	Arrival and coffee
10:45-11:00	Introduction
11:00-12:30	Moderation: Anita Traninger (FU Berlin)Ardis Butterfield (Yale University), Superficial strife: the banality of violence in the medieval pastourelleLaura Banella (Notre Dame), Transhistorical Lyric Communities and the Death of Dante-the-AuthorBernhard Huss (FU Berlin), Does a chameleon ever dissent? On literary masquerade, authorial self-fashioning and cultural community-building in Alberti’s RimeCorinna Dziudzia (Universität Erfurt), Practices of community among female poet laureates of the Early German Enlightenment
12:30-14:00	Lunch break
14:00-15:30	Brigitte Rath (Universität Innsbruck), Poetic Address and Lyric Communities: Sonnets addressing sonnetsSuchismito Khatua (Stanford University), Towards an Aesthetics of Pain: The Lyric Poetry of the Dalit Panther PoetsJana Weiß (FU Berlin), Conflict/Community 1959. Lyric Alliances in the Light of Antisemitism
15:30-16:00	Coffee break
16:00-18:00	Karen Leeder (University of Oxford),  ‘When will I say mine again and mean of all?’: Forms of resistance and community in post-socialist German poetryJacopo Galavotti (FU Berlin/Universitá di Verona), The imaginary court. Biography and poetry in Cosimo OrtestaHal Coase (Sapienza Università di Roma), ‘Which of the “yous” are “you.”’: lyric indifference in James Schuyler’s The Morning of the PoemAlexander Kappe (Halle-Wittenberg), Technical languages in 20th-century and contemporary German poetry as ‚Communities of style‘ (Celan, Grünbein, Stolterfoht, Popp)
19:00	Dinner

DAY TWO

Friday 28 June, EXC 2020 “Temporal Communities”, Room 00.05 (Otto-von-Simson-Straße 15)

10:30-11:00	Arrival and coffee
11:00-13:00	Moderation: Irene Fantappiè (Università di Cassino)Elisa Bisson (Notre Dame), Tempering Filelfo’s Milanese exegesis on Petrarch’s Fragmenta in Vat. Lat. 4786: a Florentine reading of the Commentary?Andreas Mahler (FU Berlin), Performing Community in Non-petrarchist English Renaissance Love PoetryNicolas Longinotti (FU Berlin), Expanding communities: Misceláneas and lyric poetry in the Virreinato de PerúNikolina Hatton (Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität München), Violence, Sympathy, and Militant Puritanism in Anne Bradstreet’s “A Dialogue Between Old England and New”
13:00-15:00	Lunch break
15:00-17:00	Francesco Giusti (University Oxford), Shareable Language: Lyric Gestures and Poetic Code Maren Jäger (FU Berlin), “Zaum is my national language”. Translingual lyric communities in times of conflict and warAna Rocío Jouli (FU Berlin/EXC 2020), Lyric Transgression and Archival Politics in the Documentary Poetry of Carlos Soto RománChiara Liso (FU Berlin/EXC 2020), ‘The writhing ist not Meister aus Germany’: Alliances and Ruptures in Uljana Wolf’s Translational Poetry
17:00-17:30	Conclusive remarks
17:30	Reception

Open seminar – Reading group Lyriktheorien (Friedrich Schlegel Graduiertenschule)

Wednesday, 3 July, 18:00-20:00, Seminarraum JK 33/121, Habelschwerdter Allee 45

Readings: 

Banella, Laura. „The Lyric Dante in the Twentieth Century: Hermeneutics and Editorial Forms“. Italian Studies 75, Nr. 3 (2020), 307–25. 

Giusti, Francesco. „Transcontextual Gestures: A Lyric Approach to the World of Literature“. In The Work of World Literature, herausgegeben von Francesco Giusti und Benjamin Lewis Robinson, Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2021, 75–103. 

To distribute reading materials in advance, we kindly ask you to register for the event at n.longinotti@fu-berlin.de.

The meeting will be held in English.