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128 CHRONIOUE 2

THE NINTH CONGRESS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE LITERATURĘ

ASSOCIATION, INNSBRUCK, AUGUST, 20 -24, 1979

The picturesąue Capital of the province of Tirol is a town reputed not only for Olympic Games or Alpine tours, but also for the rich historical and cultural tradition it treasures in stately buildings and monuments, most of them connected with the names of Maximilian I (whose impressive yet empty sepulchral edifice is to be seen in Hofkirche) and Maria Theresa. An ideał place for work and leisure, Innsbruck played host this year to the Ninth I.C.L.A. Congress. A particularly rich rangę of themes to cover a large area of interests of the world-wide comparatists, hence the remarkably great number of participants from all continents, was the main characteristic of this year’s edition.

Four major sections, in their turn divided into sessions, and seven workshops, beside the plenary meetings, gathered a large audience of specialists on those five busy Congress days. Theme one, “Literary Communication and Reception”, whose great popularity is also recently due to the works of Hans Robert Jauss, grouped together a very large number of papers on the theory of aesthetic, historical and social reception, the problem of reception in the theory of texts, pragmatics and semiology, literary translation. Six sessions debated the second theme, “Classical Models in Literaturę”, whose papers approached the relation between classical tradition and modern evolution, or contributed a new point of view to the present-day study of classical trends, classical norms, stylistic research, etc. Problems refer-ring to “Literaturę and the Other Arts” (painting, musie, film) were tackled in no less than twelve sessions. The rangę of subjects covercd not only specific analyses, but also ąuestions of theory and method. A record number of papers were given in the four subsections of the fourth theme, “The Evolution of the Novel” : novel-history, aspects of the narrative, novel-myth, novel-mass culture.

The seven workshops considerably extended the scope of the Congress concerned with the literatures of developing countries, deepening the tendency, also noticeable at the previous edition, to break the traditional limits of comparative studies. The workshops for Asia, Africa, North Africa and the Middle East attracted a great many specialists both from those countries and the specializedL departments of European and American universities. The workshops dedicated to translations, to problems of teaching comparative literaturę, to students of comparative literaturę and, last, but not least, the panel for reviews of comparative literaturę, addressed to students, teaching staff, translators, editors, contributors, had an invigorating effect upon the largest audience.

Considerable was the share of topics dedicated to the South-East European culture area, a subject approached not only by the specialists from the respective countries, but also by scholars from different other regions. General themes, as the relation between sociology and literary reception, the role of translations in the process of reception, or the circulation of motifs were illustrated by examples taken from Slovenian, Serbian and Bulgarian literatures, in the papers of Zdenka Petrović (Belgrade), Magda Stanovnik-Blink (Ljubliana), Katia Dimitroya Iordanova (Sofia). The relation between two national literatures, such as Greek and Serbian or Italian and Greek, in the papers of Svetlana Slapśek (Belgrade), and E. Hatzantonis (Oregon), posed specific topics for discussion. A major contribution was madę by such specialists as Zdenko Śkreb, Zagreb (chairman of the session of classical norm), Nadejda Andreeva-Popova (Sofia), Janko Kos (Ljubliana) to the second theme in papers and discussions on the Marxist analysis of classical concepts, the structure of fixed species, the evolution of the character. The relation between Petrarch and France Preśeren’s Slovene sonnets, or between Old English literaturę and Greek and Yugoslav epic, proposed by H. R. Cooper (Evanston) and J. M. Foley (Missouri) confirmed the interest taken in the South-East European tradition. Interesting points of view were offered by Branislava Miligić {Belgrade), Gajo Peles (Zagreb), Aleksander Flaker (Belgrade), on the interdisciplinary study of literaturę. The relation novel-history, studied in its genealogical aspects and from the diachronic standpoint, was illustrated by examples from Bulgarian fiction, in a paper submitted by J. Avd-jiev (Sofia), from the Turkish evolution of the novel, the paper of Belma Otus (Ankara) and from the 19th and 20th centuries Serbian novel, as presented by Slobodanka Peković (Belgrade). A research into narrative strategies and fiction models was madę by Dragan Nedel-jkoyić — Belgrade (also a chairman of the session dedicated to the mythical structure of the novel) and Miroslav Beker (Zagreb) or Ivan Dimić (Belgrade). Importance was attached to the relation novcl-myth in its semantic and narrative implication by Liljana Todorova, Skopje (chairman of the session devoted to this subject).