We cordially invite you to the lecture given by Professor Barend J. ter Haar (University of Oxford), on the anniversary pf the foundation of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange in Taiwan

“Sounds in Chinese religious culture”

Karolinum, Malá aula, Ovocný trh 3, Prague 1

Friday April 27, 2018, 16.00 hrs

Abstract:

Sound plays a central role in Chinese religious culture, also and maybe even more so from a historical perspective. Since sound, like smell, taste, and a variety of tactile experiences are extremely hard to recover historically,  it is not surprising that little attention has been paid to this dimension of religious life. Nonetheless, the situation sounds worse than it really is. We can combine insights from living religious culture, for instance (but not alone) on Taiwan, to increase our understanding of historical information. Evidently this is risky, since the past (probably plural) and the present are different worlds, especially with respect to sound. Living in an age without the buzzing of omnipresent machines, the sound as well as the conscious silences of religious practice in the past must have worked fundamentally different from today. In this lecture, I will concentrate on early evidence from the Han and Period of Disunion.

(Lecture will be in English.)

  

 

 

Göran Malmqvist (Stockholm University, Swedish Academy)

Politics and Philology at the end of the Qing dynasty: The case of Kang Youwei 康有為 (1858-1927)

 

Abstract:

My talk will deal with Kang Youwei’s activities in Sweden 1904-05, his intellectual background, his utopian work Datongshu 大同书 and his participation in the reform movement during the summer of 1898. Finally I deal critically with his politically motivated excursion into philology and his utterly futile attempt to prove that Zuozhuan 左转 and the Guwen古文 Classics were forgeries from the beginning of the Later Han period. At the end of my talk I discuss the highly negative appraisals of his works in textual criticism, presented in the 1930s by the Swedish Sinologist Bernhard Karlgren and the Chinese historian Qian Mu 钱穆.

Göran Malmqvist

Nils Göran David Malmqvist, or 馬悅然 (*1924), Swedish sinologist, linguist, translator and literary historian, is one of the most outstanding personages of European sinology. Following in the footsteps of his teacher and doctoral advisor Bernhard Karlgren, Professor Malmqvist did extensive research in the phonology and dialects of ancient Chinese language. He also did extensive research in broad area of Chinese philology and Chinese literature. As Professor of Sinology at Australian National University in Canberra and at Stockholm University, he influenced many generations of young scholars.

He is also a prolific translator, his translator’s work comprises more than 42 volumes of Chinese literature from different epochs, including ancient classics, Tang poetry, great classical novels and modern literature, especially poetry from China and Taiwan.

Professor Malmqvist has been always actively involved in academic and cultural activities, and today keeps in touch with young generation also through his blog (http://goranmalmqvist.blogspot.cz/).

In 1985, Professor Malmqvist has become a member of the Swedish Academy, a body entrusted to select the recipients of the Nobel Prize for Literature.