The Centre for Modern European Literature, in conjunction with the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, University of London), is hosting a workshop entitled ‘The West-Eastern Lyric: Modernist Poetry Between Asia and Europe’, to be held on Friday 17 November 2017 at SOAS.
In his book Enlightenment Orientalism (2011), Srinivas Aravamudan argued that ‘narratives of influence from “East” to “West” are often subject to special pleading, contingency, and “accidental sagacity,” whereas influences from the “West” to the “East” involve formulations deriving from scientific necessity, historical causality, and colonial power’. This workshop will consider the implications of Aravamudan’s insight for lyric poetry, exploring the many lives of ‘Eastern Poetry” and the ways in which its circulation across several languages challenges any understanding of modernism as occurring along a ‘single Greenwich meridian of world literature’.
Two members from the School of European Culture and Languages will present papers. Dr Xiaofan Amy Li, Lecturer in the Department of Comparative Literature, will give a talk entitled ‘The Nature of the Lyric? Henri Michaux and Chinese Poetics’, in which she will explore the connections between Michaux’s poetry (commonly seen as ‘Chinese-inspired’ or ‘Oriental’) and Chinese poetics.
Ben Hutchinson, Professor of European Literature in the Department of Modern Languages, will give a lecture entitled ‘“After-poems”: Hans Bethge and Chinese Lieder’. The talk will situate Bethge’s reception of Chinese poetry – and in particular, that of Li-Tai-Po – within the context of European chinoiserie, notably by concentrating on his engagement with a recurring imagery of song and lyric.
The all-day workshop will be held at SOAS, 21/22 Russell Square, London, beginning at 9.30am. The full programme is available here: www.soas.ac.uk/cclps/events/17nov2017-the-west-eastern-lyric-modernist-poetry-between-asia-and-europe.html
To book, please use the Eventbrite page here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-west-eastern-lyric-modernist-poetry-between-asia-and-europe-tickets-38427912922