Please join the Department of Classical Studies on Monday the 2nd of December from 4:30-6:00 in AL 124 for a lecture by Sara Ennis, PhD Candidate in Literature and Linguistics, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina. The lecture is titled, “Knowledge and Remembrance: Narrating Memory from the Norman Conquest to Modern Argentina.”.
The lecture is free and open to all interested.
About the talk:
All knowledge is remembrance, and every society builds its memory by narrating its past, whether orally or in writing. However, when a society collectively experiences a traumatic event, both memory and language are wounded, which is reflected in the textual production of that time. In turn, the memory and post-memory narratives of subsequent generations seek both to confront the trauma of loss and to keep these events alive in social memory. Here, we will explore how memory and the connection to the past are constructed in two historical contexts: English society after the Norman Conquest of the 11th century and Argentine society of the 20th century. As a link between both cases, we will consider the figure of the Argentine author and professor of English literature Jorge Luis Borges, whose work is deeply influenced by the Anglo-Saxon medieval world.
Todo conocimiento es recuerdo, y toda sociedad construye su memoria narrando su pasado, ya sea de manera oral o escrita. Sin embargo, cuando se atraviesa colectivamente un evento traumático, tanto la memoria como el lenguaje sufren heridas que se reflejan en la producción textual. A su vez, la narrativa de memoria y posmemoria de las generaciones siguientes buscará tanto enfrentar el trauma de la pérdida como mantener vivos esos eventos en la memoria social. Aquí, exploraremos cómo se construye la memoria y el vínculo con el pasado en dos contextos históricos: la sociedad inglesa tras la conquista normanda del siglo XI y la sociedad argentina del siglo XX. Tomaremos como nexo entre ambos casos la figura del autor argentino y profesor de literatura inglesa Jorge Luis Borges, cuyo trabajo está profundamente influenciado por el mundo medieval anglosajón.