1st-3rd October 2021, conference presentation at interfaceing 2021: Pandemics & Plagues, Languages & Literatures, Taipei, Taiwan
In 1-3 October 2021, CODHUS was once again virtually present at another international conference, namely interfaceing 2021: Pandemics & Plagues, Languages & Literatures, organised in a hybrid format by the editors of Interface. Journal of European Languages and Literatures at National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. The study titled Pandemics in English and Spanish poetry: A corpus-based study was presented by Margareta Boicu and Roxana Rogobete.
Derived from an internship stage developed by Margareta Boicu (MA student at the American Studies programme, LIT/WUT) at CODHUS, the study focuses on the depiction of pandemics (such as cholera, plague, COVID-19) in lyrical works written in English and Spanish, using digital instruments specific for corpus linguistics analysis. The first part of the paper aims to analyse the style of writing poetry during three outbreaks that changed or are in the process of changing the history, by identifying key terms, relevant concordances and comparing their tone and “zeitgeist”. The second part of the article will compare and contrast recent poetry (written in 2020) about COVID-19, published in English and Spanish, in order to analyse if nowadays we can talk about geo-cultural features of certain lyrical works or life amid pandemics outlines common feelings and behaviours. We will discuss how a pandemic changes language and, more specifically, changes the poetical language or rhetoric in lyrical works, tracing, through both quantitative and qualitative perspectives, the aspects towards which humanity is heading in times of crisis. Both parts are intended to create a corpus in which different types of poetry, from distinctive parts of the world, written in two languages, in different centuries, can be united in a sole unit that can highlight the power of poetry in times of instability.
Presentation excerpts and images from the conference:
More information about the event here🠗