Workshop: Animals, Adab, and Fictivity (Matthew L. Keegan; Beatrice Gründler)
Medieval Arabic literature (adab) is full of animals. The most famous example is Kalila wa-Dimna, a collection of stories about talking animals and humans. This text is usually described as "fables" or as a Mirror for Princes (Fürstenspiegel). However, the rich diversity of animal stories beyond Kalila wa-Dimna and the role these animal stories play in the broader adab tradition are not well understood. Participants in this workshop explore the various ways in which medieval authors and readers put animals to work in adab and related discourses, as the site of theological debate, as a vehicle for allegory, and as a way of thinking about poetics and fictionality. These diverse traditions of animal writing influenced, in turn, how readers interpreted Kalila wa-Dimna over the centuries. Some readers interpreted it as a work on politics, while other readers viewed it as a repository of proverbial wisdom, as a mystical treatise, or as a picaresque narrative. This workshop shows how animals were not sequestered into one genre or mode of writing but roamed across disciplinary boundaries as part of a dynamic culture of imagination, inquiry, and writing.
Workshop ProgramDAY 1 ——— May 9th
9:00 - 9:15 Coffee
9:15 - 9:30 Welcoming Remarks
Beatrice Gruendler
9:30 - 9:45 AnonymClassic Web Platform Demonstration
Mahmoud Kozae
9:45 - 10:00 Introduction to the Workshop
Matthew L. Keegan
10:00 - 11:00 Johannes Stephan
What is Fictionality in Arabic before Fiction?
Discussant: Isabel Toral
11:00 - 11:30 Coffee Break
11:30 - 12:30 Ali-Adnan Sakr
Avicenna on Fiction, or Why Kalīla wa-Dimna Is Not Poetry
Discussant: Beatrice Gruendler
12:30 - 13:30 Ignacio Sánchez
Giving Voice to the Beasts: the Ikhwan al-Ṣafāʾ and the Pragmatics of Fabulation
Discussant: Regula Forster
13:30 - 15:30 Lunch Break
15:30 - 16:30 Jeannie Miller
al-Jāḥiẓ's Animals
Discussant: Geert Jan van Gelder
16:30 - 17:30 Guy Ron-Gilboa
"Das Ṭāʾir, das es nicht gibt": ʿAnqāʾ Muġrib and the Poetics of Imaginary Beings
Discussant: Theodore S. Beers
17:30 - 18:00 Tea
The Kalīla and Dimna ‒ AnonymClassic project hosted at Freie Universität Berlin has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 742 635.
DAY 2 ——— May 10th
9:15 - 9:30 Coffee
9:30 - 10:30 Francesca Bellino
Combining adab with Political Literature and Fluctuating between History and Fictivity in Advising the Ruler: Ibn Ẓafar’s Sulwān al-muṭā‘
Discussant: Ignacio Sánchez
10:30 - 11:00 Coffee
11:00 - 12:00 Matthew L. Keegan
"Its Meaning Lies Elsewhere": A Meditation on Kalīla wa-Dimna’s Reception
Discussant: Johannes Stephan
12:00 - 13:00 Khouloud Khalfallah
How to Read Kalīla wa-Dimna through Multi-Text Manuscripts
Discussant: Olly Akkerman
13:00 - 14:00 Lunch
14:00 - 15:00 Kevin Blankinship
al-Maʿarrī’s Anxious Menagerie: The Epistle of the Horse and the Mule
Discussant: Francesca Bellino
15:00 - 16:00 Geert Jan van Gelder
In the Time of al-Fiṭaḥl when Stones Were still Moist and All Things Spoke: Very short Arabic animal fables and just-so stories
Discussant: Guy Ron-Gilboa
16:00 - 16:30 Coffee
16:30 - 17:30 Plenary Discussion & Concluding Remarks
19:00 Conference Dinner for participants
Zeit & Ort
09.05.2019 - 10.05.2019
2.2051