1st International Egodocumental Network Conference
Vilnius University, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, the University of Lodz, and the Egodocumental Research Group (https://egodocuments.umk.pl) organise an international conference focusing on research, development, and changing perceptions of egodocuments in the twenty-first century. The conference aims to bring together scholars from different disciplines to share their insights and to encourage interdisciplinary studies of egodocuments.
The conference will also be the first meeting of the International Egodocumental Network established in December 2023 by the Egodocumental Research Group (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and the University of Lodz) to unite scholars from different disciplines working on egodocuments. It provides a platform for discussion, collaboration, and exchange of information between the participants, as well as online research seminars organized twice a year. In this dimension, our conference continues two editions of the Scientific Symposium "Egodocuments, Life-Writing and Autobiographical Texts..." organized at NCU in Toruń in 2022 and 2024.
Keynote speakers
Dr. Nataliia Voloshkova
Kazimierz Wielki University and Oxford Brookes University
Prof. Leona Toker
Hebrew University and Shalem Academic College
Prof. François-Joseph Ruggiu
Sorbonne Université, CNRS and Oxford University
Adam Bednarczyk
Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń
Performativity of Medieval Japanese Travel Diaries in the Light of Geopoetics
Medieval Japanese travel diaries and memoirs should be placed on the border between literature and non-fiction. More or less extensive and subjective travel accounts are interwoven with poems that are usually coupled with descriptions of places. This kind of composition of almost all works in the genre in question creates a unique textual space, in which one is faced with, for instance, the phenomenon of epigonization of previous literary imaginations of places and their redescriptions. In these texts, real and/or imagined places are juxtaposed with their poetic representations. In my presentation, referring to the concept of geopoetics, as conceived by E. Rybicka (2014), I argue that the epigonization of places mentioned in Japanese travel journals written between the 13th and 16th centuries was one of the manifestations of the performativity of this literary genre. What is meant by references to known places (utamakura) in diaries are actions that actively influenced geographic space in tangible and intangible terms. They not only influenced the construction of Japan’s local literary geography, but created (and in some cases are still creating) the actual cultural heritage of these places, as I will discuss on the example of a specific place described in several travel diaries
