Call for papers for the international conference „Mapping Voltaire in Portugal and abroad“, organised by the Mapping Voltaire in Portugal and in Portuguese Literature Project and the CLP (Research Centre of Portuguese Literature), to be held in Coimbra, 15–16 May 2025. Deadline for submission: 22 March 2025.
The aim of this international conference is to conclude the project Mapping Voltaire in Portugal and in Portuguese Literature – 18th to 21st centuries by the Centre for Portuguese Literature of the University of Coimbra. This event will be structured on two levels of reflection.
On the one hand, the results of the project will be reviewed and disseminated to the larger scientific community. The project will present and make public the open-access database containing the complete corpus of Voltaire’s Portuguese translations, as well as the digital anthology associated with each digital entry. At the same time, the contents of Cartographies de Voltaire au Portugal – XVIIIe-XXIe siècle volume, soon to be published in „Polen – Pouvoirs, lettres, normes“ collection, by Classiques Garnier, will be debated for future research perspectives.
On the other hand, the conference intends to extend the conclusion of the project into the future and abroad. The semantics of the adverb opens the thematic axes of this event to other geographies and approaches to reception, with the aim of establishing an international debate around the various enquiries into the reception of Voltaire around the world, in the context, for example, of „Enquête 3. The reception of Candide“, launched by the Société Voltaire. In fact, the specific aims of this project by the Centre for Portuguese Literature of the University of Coimbra (CLP) challenge Voltairean research to explore the intercultural, transhistorical and interpoetic relationships that define the way Voltaire is read and rewritten on different continents, from the eighteenth century to the present day.
Researchers are invited to present papers on four different topics:
- Voltaire in Portuguese literature and culture: new perspectives
- Voltaire and the Enlightenment: fiction(s) and History
- Mapping Voltaire around the world: theories and methodologies
- Voltaire digital: current and future perspectives
Timetable
22 March 2025: deadline for submitting proposals for papers: abstract (300–450 words), keywords (4–5), to be sent to clp@fl.uc.pt [in Portuguese, French or English]
20 April 2025: deadline for the scientific committee’s response
30 April 2025: publication of the conference programme
Keynote speakers
Sylvain Menant (Sorbonne University)
Renaud Bret-Vitoz (Sorbonne University)
Laurence Macé (Rouen Normandie University – to be confirmed)
Dan Barker (Voltaire Foundation)
Organisation Committee: Marta Teixeira Anacleto (Project coordinator), Maria Helena Santana (CLP coordinator), Gabriella Mendes (CLP research fellow), Ana Cláudia Pires (CLP research fellow)
