Literatures without Frontiers? (Ghent)

On 9 and 10 February 2018, a conference will be held in Ghent that aims to bring together a number of telling examples that advocate a transnational perspective for the construction and writing of the literary history (histories?) of the Low Countries in the period 1200-1800. Papers will address case studies (authors, texts, translations, mechanisms of textual production, motifs, tropes, genres) that on account of their ‘transnational’ character have fallen outside the scope of the current attempts of literary historiography. Other papers will focus on the literary infrastructure that enabled the cross-border reception of literary texts (like the repertoire of travelling theatre companies), or on case studies that are discussed in extant histories but whose impact and importance could be brought out differently (more interestingly, hopefully) in a transnational framework.

The conference will be held at the Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde (KANTL), Koningstraat 18, Ghent, Belgium. The KANTL is located in close proximity to the medieval city center.