University of Coimbra project will map Voltaire’s works in Portugal
A team from the University of Coimbra, a project that aims to map all Portuguese translations of the work of the writer and philosopher Voltaire, from the end of the 18th century to contemporary times, advances that institution.
In a press release, the University of Coimbra states that this project will lay the foundations for the creation of an international network of studies on the cartography “of one of the greatest symbols of the French Enlightenment”.
Coordinated by Professor Marta Teixeira Anacleto, from the Center for Portuguese Literature (CLP) of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Coimbra (FLUC), the project “Cartographing Voltaire in Portugal and Portuguese Literature” adopts an innovative research methodology in the field of cartographies. and also a group of researchers from several universities in the country, Madeira and Azores, and also a literary/library from Geneva, Madeira.
The group of collaborators from the University of Oxford, or the Voltaire Foundation of the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom, participate in this work.
“There are numerous Portuguese translations of the narrative – fiction and dramatic, epic, philosophical and political – that were published in 18th century literature since the end of the 18th century. press.
A scientist explains that this aims to “make the writer and the evaluation project of all Portuguese translations survey the author, one of the greatest philosophers of the French Enlightenment, and also of the European Enlightenment, because Voltaire was one who traveled and who sowed his doctrines on tolerance, equality and fraternity throughout Europe”.
The team has already carried out a survey of the existing Portuguese translations and will now begin the cartography phase.
Second, the translations are now political without references from the various contexts — on a historical, cultural and edited note.
Marta Teix Anacleto considers that Voltaire’s work is “a fundamental nation of Western thought”, which justifies, from the outset, the “relevance” assumed by “a complete study of all translations, both for the study of Portuguese literature and culture, for researchers associated with historiography, the history of ideas and the book, and even for the general public”.
After the cartography, an interactive and open access database will be created, which will have an associated annotated digital anthology and a volume of thematic studies.
Once the interactive database, the anthology and the volume of studies have been completed, the objective is “to move towards the creation of a network of studies of Voltaire’s cartography in the world”.
“We are establishing synergies, so that, in the future, a network with related projects existing, for example, in Germany, France, Netherlands, Hungary, Italy, United Kingdom, Russia, China and Japan, with the aim of establishing a mapping European/World Voltaire”, he concluded.