A debate on the cults of national poets and the fall of Westen Canon, with the participation of IHC Visiting Scholar Yuri Slezkine.

Scriptures, Classics, and Canons: A Comparative Perspective

Literary canons have been recently submitted to criticism in different Western countries. This tendency can be understood as an attempt to open up space for literary works that have long been ignored. At the same time this process may be related to the so-called decline of Western civilization.

Yuri Slezkine is the “IHC Visiting Scholar 2021” and his current project is a comparative history of sacred texts and their authors, including the Confucian canon, the Sanskrit classics, the Christian, Islamic, and Buddhists scriptures, and the cults of national bards from Homer and Virgil to Shakespeare, Cervantes, Pushkin, and Mickiewicz. In this event he will be joined by historians Diogo Ramada Curto and Luís Trindade, and by literary scholar Manuela Ribeiro Sanches.

Programme:

16h00  |  Opening remarks, by Rita Luís (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)

16h15  | The Cults of National Poets: Pushkin, Camões and Other Virgils
With Yuri Slezkine (UC Berkeley) and Diogo Ramada Curto (IPRI NOVA). Moderation: Nuno Medeiros (CEC — FLUL).

17h30 | The Fall of the Western Canon and the (Yet Another) Decline of Western Civilization
With Yuri Slezkine (UC Berkeley), Manuela Ribeiro Sanches (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST) and Luís Trindade (CEIS20 — University of Coimbra). Moderation: Rita Luís (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST).