The Paris Early Modern Seminar is proud to host the first seminar for the International Consortium of Centres for Early Modern Studies (ICCEMS).

This seminar will be led by Dr. Laetitia Sansonetti (Université Paris-Nanterre) and Prof. Ladan Niayesh (Université Paris-Cité), on the Brepols series “Polyglot Encounters in Early Modern Europe“.

Abstract

In this presentation, we would like to introduce the series we co-edit with Brepols publishers, “Polyglot Encounters in Early Modern Europe” (https://www.brepols.net/series/PEEMB). The aim of this series is to investigate polyglot practices in early modern English literary texts by crossing perspectives in a transdisciplinary approach. Volumes in the series analyse how an English linguistic, but also social and political, and more generally cultural, identity is built by means of contact and interaction with other languages, through borrowings and translations.

We will present briefly volume 1, which was published in 2022, volume 2, which will come out later this year, and volume 3, in preparation. We will then open a discussion with the group about what polyglossia means for us who work in early modern studies, how it can help us think the triangulation between languages, lands and nations in an era of commerce, colonisation and conflict, and in particular the place of English and England within the British Isles and beyond, put in geographical and linguistic perspective with other languages and nations, near and far.

About the Speakers

Laetitia Sansonetti is Senior Lecturer in English (Translation Studies) at Université Paris Nanterre and a junior fellow of Institut Universitaire de France. Her research bears on the reception of classical and continental texts in early modern England, language learning, poetry and rhetoric and questions of authorship and authority. Her current research project on translation and polyglossia in early modern England (https://tape1617.hypotheses.org/) is funded by a five-year grant from Institut Universitaire de France.

Ladan Niayesh is Professor of Early Modern Studies at the University of Paris (ex-Paris Diderot) and a member of the LARCA research centre of the CNRS (UMR 8225). Her research focuses on Early Modern travel writing and travel drama, more specifically in connection to Muscovy and Persia. Her latest publications include Three Romances of Eastern Conquest (Manchester University Press, 2018) and Eastern Resonances (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), coedited with Claire Gallien. She currently coedits the Persian travels of the Sherley brothers with Kurosh Meshkat and Alasdair MacDonald for the Hakluyt Society.

This online seminar will take place on 16 May, 10am-11.30pm CEST (UTC +2). Register to attend.