Theme

Apophaticism has left a substantial imprint on the history and development of Eastern Christian theology and spirituality and has also been a fundamental ingredient of Western mysticism. Moreover, it has permeated ancient, medieval and modern literary and poetical discourse and has grown into a cross-disciplinary tradition of probing, challenging and questioning the limits of human language, thereby prompting to transform traditional genres of representation and communication.

The goal of this conference is to explore the interaction between apophaticism and literary praxis from the early Byzantine period to the nineteenth century: its aim is to study the various repercussions negative theology has had on literary representation and poetical modes of expression in both East and West. The conference will combine 1) contributions on the historical development of apophatic theology from the common ancient Greek and early Christian sources to the diverging traditions in East and West; 2) theoretical reflections on the apophatic appeal to transcend the boundaries of human language and to explore new modes of representation; 3) concrete analyses of the fruitful interaction between apophaticism and the creation of new literary and poetical modes of representation in both the Eastern and Western tradition.