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Truth and falsehood during the Renaissance

Vrai et faux à la Renaissance

Vero e falso nel Rinascimento

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Published on Monday, February 25, 2019

Abstract

Thanks to the coming of an information society and the rise of new media capable of spreading knowledge, our time is often described as a “post-truth” era. Could have any similar ambiguity been present in early modern Europe? Following the political and religious turmoil which marked the Renaissance period, together with the renewal of theorical and technical knowledges, a whole new range of relations between truth and falsehood was established, thus producing a crisis of the current “regimes of truth” which this PhD conference aims to investigate. This two-day long PhD conference aims to encourage new, reflections, debates and to raise new questions about the ever-complex relation of Truth / Falsehood in the Renaissance period, while focusing on their epistemological context.

Announcement

Introduction

The ‘Association des Doctorants du Centre d’études supérieures de la Renaissance’ (ADCESR) organizes for the third consecutive year its Rencontres doctorales pluridisciplinaires (history, history of art, history of sciences and techniques, musicology, literature & languages, philosophy). This year the workshop will be devoted to the problematic relation of Truth and Falsehood during the Renaissance period. The conference will be held the 20 and 21 of May, in Tours at the Centre d’études supérieures de la Renaissance (CESR)

Topic

Thanks to the coming of an information society and the rise of new media capable of spreading knowledge, our time is often described as a “post-truth” era. Could have any similar ambiguity been present in early modern Europe? Following the political and religious turmoil which marked the Renaissance period, together with the renewal of theorical and technical knowledges, a whole new range of relations between truth and falsehood was established, thus producing a crisis of the current “regimes of truth” which this PhD conference aims to investigate.

During the Renaissance, as nowadays, the increasing number of disciplines and truth-bearing messages, spread and filtered by new media, were followed by a drastic growth of misstatements and fictional discourses. If the new means developed by philology allowed humanists to distinguish between true historical documents and false ones, the very same theorical instruments could be employed in order to produce historical forgeries. However, each discourse implying truth and falsehood requires mastering a knowledge as well as a power. Hence, inquiring the links between those two notions in the Renaissance period must bring us to analyse rival thought system which are responsible of producing such discourses in their political, juridical, religious et artistical context.

Therefore, the “effectual truth of the thing” brought by Machiavelli in order to reason about the “quality of the times” may have appeared in Italy or during the French Wars of Religion, as an open justification for dissimulation, lying and deception. This two-day long PhD conference, related to the research area “Savoirs : théories, pratiques, circulations” (CESR), aims to encourage new, reflections, debates and to raise new questions about the ever-complex relation of Truth / Falsehood in the Renaissance period, while focusing on their epistemological context.

Lines of research

Contribution may focus on one or more of these suggested lines of research:

  • Does the couple Truth/Falsehood correspond with the couple Authentic/ Inauthentic?
  • How can the link between Truth and Falsehood help us to inquire such concepts as Fiction, Myth and Fable?
  • How do the processes of validation of discourses and the content of knowledges articulate themselves in relation to each other?
  • Did the spreading of knowledges through the printing press influenced their epistemological status?

Practical Information

The proposals, coming from a PhD student, young Post Graduates or Master students aiming to pursue their researches,

have to be sent to the following e-mail address, asso.doctorants.cesr@gmail.com,

before 15/04/2019.

Each proposal must summarise the candidate’s speech in a maximum of two hundred and fifty word and must be followed by a brief presentation of the candidate (University, Topic of Research, PhD Tutor)

The lecture may be given in French, English or Italian and should last approximately twenty minutes. Each lecture might concern one or more fields of interests of the Renaissance period (history, history of art, history of sciences and techniques, musicology, literature and philosophy). The chronological borders given for “Renaissance” as we intend it are Petrarch and Descartes. A final discussion will be the occasion to cross different point of views and disciplines to understand the various issues relative to these two notions, Truth and Falsehood, during the Renaissance period.

The Centre d'études supérieures de la Renaissance will be glad to invite his guests for lunch. However, transportation and accommodation will remain at your charge.

Organizing Committee

  • Jean Beuvier (PhD Student of CESR)
  • Lorenzo Paoli (PhD Student of CESR and UniBo)
  • Guillaume Pinet (PhD Student of CESR)

Scientific Committee

  • Laurent Gerbier (MCF HDR, CESR)
  • Florence Alazard (MCF HDR, CESR)
  • Stephan Geonget (MCF HDR, CESR)
  • Olivier Guerrier (PR, Université Toulouse II Jean Jaurès)

Date(s)

  • Monday, April 15, 2019

Keywords

  • vrai, faux, renaissance, savoir, histoire culturelle, fiction, représentation

Contact(s)

  • Association des doctorants du CESR
    courriel : asso [dot] doctorants [dot] cesr [at] gmail [dot] com

Information source

  • Association des doctorants du CESR
    courriel : asso [dot] doctorants [dot] cesr [at] gmail [dot] com

License

CC0-1.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

To cite this announcement

« Truth and falsehood during the Renaissance », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Monday, February 25, 2019, https://doi.org/10.58079/1234

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