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IMC 2015: Sessions

Session 1604: Rustaveli: A 12th-Century Georgian Poet and Thinker

Thursday 9 July 2015, 11.15-12.45

Organiser:Bert Beynen, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Temple University, Philadelphia
Moderator/Chair:Donald Rayfield, Department of Russian, Queen Mary University, London
Paper 1604-aShota Rustaveli's Philosophy of Friendship: Aristotelian or Georgian?
(Language: English)
Bert Beynen, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Temple University, Philadelphia
Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Language and Literature - Other, Philosophy
Paper 1604-bReinterpretation and Renewal of the Concept of Love from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance
(Language: English)
Elguja Khintibidze, Institute of the History of Georgian Literature, Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University
Index terms: Language and Literature - Italian, Language and Literature - Other, Philosophy, Theology
Paper 1604-cThe Meaning of Vepx-i in Shota Rustaveli's The Man in the Panther's Skin
(Language: English)
Luigi Magarotto, Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Culturali Comparati, Università Ca' Foscari, Venezia
Index terms: Art History - Decorative Arts, Byzantine Studies, Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Language and Literature - Other
Abstract

Beynen contrasts Aristotle's conception of friendship - a friend is 'another self', - with Rustaveli's, who describes friends who are each other's opposite initially, but then develop into a teacher-pupil relation. Magarotto concludes on the basis of translations from the Hebrew and Persian, and of Georgian miniatures, that vepxi should be translated as 'leopard' or 'panther', and not 'tiger'. Khintibidze discusses the divine reinterpretation of the human emotion of love, characteristic not only for late medieval Europe, but also earlier, for Shota Rustaveli's poem The Man in the Panther Skin.