Title: Dialogic Method in Literary Diachrony
Lecturer: Matthias Freise (Professor and Chair of Slavic Philology Department, GöttingenUniversity)
Chairperson: FAN Jin (Professor of Comparative Literature, East China Normal University)
Date: 2 pm, March 25th, 2015 (Wednesday)
Venue: Room 5303, Building of School of Humanities, Minhang Campus, ECNU
Sponsor: Si-mian Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities, ECNU
Abstract of the Lecture:
The lecture deals with the problem of segmentating literary history in epochs. Recent research in Europe refrains from using terms of epochs, because these terms are believed to be just inventions of literary historians. In my lecture, I give some arguments, why it is not only practical to use terms of epochs as hermeneutic tools, but also that these terms are the results of a constant dialogue between present and past culture. This dialogue has formed and still forms cultural history, and therefore epochs are real in the same way as culture is real. The dialogue with the past is essential not only for understanding the people of former times, but also for every new generation, to form its own cultural identity. Being in an epoch or part of an epoch does, in the light of dialogue, not mean to be limited to a worldview. In the lecture, I try to demonstrate, why every epoch is a specific, but nevertheless maximal valid expression of the relationship of mankind towards the world.
Brief Introduction of the Lecturer:
Prof. Matthias Freise, born on 29. 09. 1957, is Chair of Slavic Philology Department, GöttingenUniversity, member of directorate of Center for Comparative Studies at GöttingenUniversity. 1992: Dissertation on “Mikhail Bakhtin‘s philosophical aesthetics of literature”. 1997: Habilitation on Anton Čechov‘s prose work. 2004-2007: Director of the Center of Comparative Studies (ZkS) at GöttingenUniversity. 2004-2009: Slavic literatures coordinator for Kindlers Literaturlexikon. 2010: Visiting professor at Sankt Petersburg State University, Russia. Co-editor of “Opera Slavica” series and of “Germanoslavica” (Prague/Czech Republic), “Litteraria Copernicana” (Torun/Poland), “Novyj fililogicheskij vestnik” (Moscow/Russia) and “Tcheljabinskij gumanitarij” (Cheljabinsk/Russia) journals. Professor Freise has published Michail Bachtins philosophische Ästhetik der Literatur (1993), Die Prosa Anton Čechovs. Eine Untersuchung im Ausgang von Einzelanalysen (1997), Russkij jazyk bez kul’turnych granic (2009), Slawistische Literaturwissenschaft (2012), Geschichtlichkeit im Werk von Czesław Miłosz (2014), etc.
