“Translating Wisdom: Interfaith Dialogue in the Medieval Mediterranean”. The main aim of the workshop is bringing together a group of around eight specialists in the topic to explore the range of translation methods and styles to shed light on the ways in which translators negotiate between preserving supposedly universal values with those that need to be adapted for a specific community.

In her talk, Isabel Toral will first give a brief survey of the Arabic genre “mirror of princes/advice literature” on the Medieval Iberian Peninsula.  Then, she will focus particularly the ways these text quoted, framed, culturally translated and integrated “Indian and Persian wisdom” (e.g. looking at quotations from Kalila wa Dimna, Kitab Barlaam, but also from Middle Persian Andarz-literature). She will also discuss the function of these quotations within the architecture of these collections and analyze what they tell about the reader’s expectations and their cultural horizon.