Texts: Extracts from al-Iqd al-farīd by Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih [English translation] and Walter Benjamin's Passagen-Werk[English/German]

Chair: Isabel Toral and Simon Godart.

Scholars of premodern Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Syriac, and other, including modern, literatures meet every two weeks to discuss milestones of literary theory and recent contributions to narrative studies (mostly in English), with a particular focus on the analysis of frame narratives, such as Kalīla and Dimna. The subject of each session is one or two groundbreaking and thought-provoking contributions in literary theory, with relevance for the analysis of literary works. The fortnightly online meetings started in the summer term of 2020 are to be carried on until further notice on a remote basis. 

Together with AnonymClassic Principal Investigator Beatrice Gruendler, Theory Reading Group initiator Johannes Stephan convenes the “Framing Narratives” conference in November 25-27, 2020, hosted by Excellence Cluster 2020 “Temporal Communities” in collaboration with AnonymClassic at Freie Universität Berlin. For further details see: https://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/en/e/kalila-wa-dimna/events/stephan_framing.html.

It is possible to join the group at any given time, please contact johannes.stephan@fu-berlin.de for participation.