The Popularization of Entertainment from the Enlightenment to Modernism:
A Cultural Transfer from West to East?
Johann Michael Voltz, 1824, Germany
“In his wrath the mayor of Krähwinkel adjourned.”
13-14 November 2015
Maison de la Recherche
28 rue Serpente – 75006 Paris
This international conference aims at sheding light on the circulation of “classical” forms of the
entertainment culture prevailing since the Renaissance, may they be literary genres (mock epic,
parody, satire, epigram and so forth), media (periodicals, satirical prints, leaflets, books, theatre,
cabaret, photography, cinema), or modalities (canonized cultures, fortuitous cultures, fashion
phenomena and so forth). Often related to antic sources and updated by Western European
cultures (Italian, Spanish, English or French), these forms were usually spread in East Central
Europe through the German culture, and grew into cultural patterns. To what extent were such
forms copied, readjusted, travestied and mocked?
We would like to assess this passage: does it pertain to reception in line with the Constance
school’s reader-response theory, in which, according to Ingarden and Iser, the reader takes part in
creating the object (s)he appropriates? Does it relate to cultural transfers which, according to
Michel Espagne and Michael Werner, are not only supported by the circulation of cultural items,
but also by cultural practices and a network of institutions and sociabilities (schools and
universities, reading circles and libraries, associations and so forth)? Or should we rather speak in
terms of acculturation of dominant cultures’ patterns, in line with postcolonial studies applied to
the reappraisal of the transeuropean cultural field?
The papers will apprehend the networks and patterns of circulations through which such forms
were spread, and to single out the culture they got confronted with: which was it? Was it a
“local”, a “popular” culture intended to remain as a “substratum” as it met with these new
forms? Did elite cultures seek legitimacy as they claimed a classical, and even more so an antic
legacy, may that have been to stand out from the Western canon? How could such forms spring
from the reception or integration of disparate sources? Take the case of Sterne-like (or Diderotlike) self-referential narratives that turn the narrator’s irony into a key feature of the text: are they
combined with figures, topics, and rhetorical devices stemming from Eastern and Central
European canon, foklore and oral culture? What are the paths through which these patterns were
spread? (One can think about the so-called “Russian model”, which became quite influent in
return in the second half of the 19th century.)
The first day of our international conference will be dedicated to the years 1780-1848, whereas
the second day will be dedicated to the years 1848-1900.
The international conference on “The Popularization of Entertainment from the Enlighenment
to Modernism: A Cultural Transfer from West to East?” is designed to be the first step of a
research program on “THE CULTURES OF ENTERTAINMENT: CIRCULATION OF PATTERNS AND
PRACTICES. ANOTHER HISTORY OF EUROPE FROM WEST TO EAST, FROM THE ENLIGHTENMENT
TO THE WORLD WARS.”
This program aims at assessing the part played by entertainment within European modern
cultures. Based on an interdisciplinary approach, the program is based on the exploration of the
semantic scope of the French concept of divertissement: a scope comprised between a theological
and metaphysical meaning and a more frivolous one. In English though, for lack of a better
word, two notions are relevant to better explain the parameters of our inquiry: diversion, as in a
worldly standpoint against the Heavens, and entertainment, with its idle connotations and its variety
of pleasures. Between these two poles a whole range of synonyms can be embraced (distraction,
subversion, leisure, idleness), along with various social strategies, practices and institutions. To
what extent do these cultures of divertissement show the other side of European history, and of the
great narratives that were made of it?
Our hunch is that such cultures of entertainment have acquainted societies with the transgressing
of norms and conventions. Such transgression would have applied to taboo images that were
representative of order (as within the institutions of power and control). We believe they initiated
social practices, which in turn generated alternative sociabilities. Transgression can oscillate
between various figures–irony, mockery, blasphemy–and is a trial for a given society: both a
challenge and a touchstone for the contemporaries.
We hope this first conference may give rise to an ambitious research program examining such
cultural transfers in its whole European scale.
An initiative from EUR’ORBEM : http://eurorbem.paris-sorbonne.fr/
Contacts: Xavier Galmiche
[email protected].
–
[email protected] ;
Clara
Royer
–