"Renaissance Translations"
The Renaissance has traditionally been considered a period of rebirth, a truism that has come increasingly under critical scrutiny. How, instead, might translation work as a defining rubric for the sixteenth century in France: as a period that witnessed a systematic and widespread translation of the past and of other cultures into new languages, forms, and genres? How were classical, antique, and medieval works and ideas resuscitated and recuperated for varied purposes in the sixteenth century in ways that masqueraded as “mere” linguistic translation but in fact served as cultural, intellectual, and political appropriation? How does translation as an intellectual and cultural operation occlude other processes of appropriation? Possible topics include: uses of the past; the rise of the vernacular; the relationship of French to Latin and/or other vernaculars; translation practice; the relationship between translation and projects of adaptation and imitation; translation as a metaphor for broader processes of cultural appropriation.
Please send 250-word abstract for 20-25 minute paper to Katherine Kong (kkong@utk.edu) by November 8, 2010.
For more information on the KFLC, see: http://web.as.uky.edu/kflc/
