Chrześcijańskie dziedzictwo duchowe narodów słowiańskich. Literatura, język, kultura, historia. Seria 4, Kultury słowiańskie wobec dziedzictwa Oświecenia

Abstract

The series of international academic conferences on the Christian spiritual heritage of the Slavic nations was initiated in 2002 by Prof. Zofia Abramowicz. By 2019, three volumes of conference proceedings have been published. Volume IV, titled „Slavic cultures and the heritage of the Age of Enlightenment. Language. Literature. Culture. History” presents the proceedings of the international conference held on May 17–18, 2018 in the Supraśl Academy conference centre on the premises of the famous Orthodox monastery of the Annunciation of the Mother of God, founded in 1498. The conference was organised by the University of Białystok (the “East– West” Chair of Research in Language and Literature and the Chair of Historical Linguistics of the Faculty of Language and Literature; the Chair of Orthodox Theology; the Chair of Catholic Theology), the Supraśl Academy, and the Oikoumene Academic Association. The Organising Committee was headed by Prof. Zofia Abramowicz and Prof. Jarosław Ławski. The Research Committee included twenty three researchers from Poland and abroad. Eighteen researchers, including six from abroad (Austria, Belarus, and Ukraine), took part in the session. The participants had an opportunity to visit the Supraśl Museum of Icons, take a sightseeing walk around the town, and visit the monastery to get a feel for its spiritual atmosphere. The first day of the conference was devoted to the Enlightenment heritage of the Slavic nations. The day culminated with a festive dinner at the refectory of the Supraśl Academy. Conference participants presented their research on the following issues: - The influence of the European Enlightenment on Slavic cultures in the 17th–20th centuries. - The Western European (French, German, English) national models of the Enlightenment and their Slavic counterparts. - The ideas of the Enlightenment and their influence on Slavic literatures. - The linguistic reflection of the Enlightenment view of the world and humanity in Slavic literatures and cultures. - The Enlightenment in Western Europe and its influence on the Christian churches in Slavic countries. - The influence of the ideas of the Enlightenment as adopted by individual Slavic countries on other Slavic cultures. - Art and culture as an expression of the inspirations brought by the Enlightenment. - Reason, empiricism, and sensualism in Slavic adaptations. - The ideas of the Enlightenment and the emancipation of Central and Eastern European nations. - The reception of the ideas of the Great French Revolution in Slavic countries. - The Bible in the light of the Enlightenment: the Slavic context. The session brought together researchers from various disciplines: Polish, Russian, and Slavic studies; general and comparative linguistics; history. The idea behind the 2018 session was to show how Slavic cultures coped with the heritage of the Age of Enlightenment – an age that stripped the world of divinity and promoted secularization or even anti theism and ostentatious anti clericalism. As becomes clear from the papers collected in this book, Slavic cultures were ambivalent in their reception of the Age of Enlightenment, and its heritage was not easy for them to absorb. The volume contains seventeen papers contributed by researchers from Poland, Austria, and Ukraine; it is divided into 3 chapters: “Language”, “Literature”, “Culture, history, written records”. The book has been edited by Prof. Z. Abramowicz and Dr K. Rutkowski of the Institute of East Slavic Languages and Literatures and Prof. J. Ławski of the “East– West” Research Chair at the Faculty of Language and Literature of the University of Białystok.