IMC 2017: Sessions
Session 123: 'Self' and 'Otherness' across Conceptual, Geographical, and Religious Boundaries
Monday 3 July 2017, 11.15-12.45
Organiser: | Yu Onuma, Department of English, Doshisha University, Kyoto |
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Moderator/Chair: | Alaric Hall, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki |
Paper 123-a | Imagining Christian Unity: Images of Saracens as Ideal Religious Others in Middle English Romances (Language: English) Index terms: Crusades, Islamic and Arabic Studies, Language and Literature - Middle English |
Paper 123-b | Otherness as an Ideal: The Tradition of the 'Virtuous' Indians (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Comparative, Learning (The Classical Inheritance), Mentalities |
Paper 123-c | Europe and the Non-European Other in the Medieval Geographical Tradition (Language: English) Index terms: Geography and Settlement Studies, Language and Literature - Comparative, Learning (The Classical Inheritance), Mentalities |
Abstract | The idea of Otherness is inseverable from its counterpart, Self, as the concept of Otherness is set against the Self. There are several methods in how boundaries between Self/Other are set, and sometimes, blurred. This session explores how these boundaries are dealt with through the examination of various kinds of texts. Paper -a is about how the image of religious others was formed and used to demarcate a border between Self and Other in Middle English romances. Paper -b discusses the motif of naked Eastern philosophers in classical and medieval texts to see how Otherness was tamed. Through an examination of geographical texts, paper -c addresses the issue of conceptual boundaries between Europe and other regions of the world. |