William
Franke
http://sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/complit/franke
Program
in Comparative Literature email: william.franke@vanderbilt.edu
VU
Station B #351709 telephone:
(615) 421-6030 (weekdays)
Vanderbilt
University (615)
952-3185 (weekends)
Nashville,
TN 37235 fax:
(615) 343-7258
ACADEMIC DEGREES:
1988-91 Stanford
University, Ph. D. in Comparative Literature
1986-88 University
of California at Berkeley, M.A. in Comparative Literature
1978-80 Oxford
University, M.A. in Philosophy and Theology
1974-78 Williams
College, B.A. in Philosophy, summa cum
laude
EMPLOYMENT:
Fall 2005 University
of Hong Kong
Visiting Associate Professor of Comparative Literature
1991-present Vanderbilt University
Associate
Professor of Comparative Literature and Italian
and
Associate Professor of Religious Studies (secondary appointment)
ACADEMIC AWARDS AND HONORS:
Fellowships
·
Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, Fellow, sabbatical year in Germany, 1994-95
(affiliated with Universität Potsdam, sponsored
by Prof. Dr. Helena Harth)
·
Bogliasco Foundation, Fellow in Philosophy (Genova, Italy), Spring 2006
·
Camargo Foundation, Residential Research Fellowship (Cassis, France),
Fall 2000
·
Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, Fellow, Vanderbilt, 1995-96
(year-long weekly seminar on the
Millennium, with stipendium)
·
Stanford Fellowship, (in lieu
of New Century Fellowship at University of Chicago
and University Fellowship at
Yale), 1988-91
·
John E. Moody Scholarship, Oxford University, 1978-80
·
Fulbright-University
of Salzburg Distinguished Chair in Intercultural Theology and Study of
Religions, 2006-2007
·
Rosenberg Poetry
Prize, UC Berkeley, 1987
·
Skeat-Whitfield
Essay Prize in English, Oxford University, 1979
·
Scholarship from
W. B. Yeats International Summer School, Sligo, Ireland, 1979
·
John W. Miller
Prize in Philosophy, Williams College, 1978
·
Phi Beta Kappa,
1977
·
·
Research Grant for
On What Cannot Be Said, Vanderbilt University Research Council, 2002
·
Travel Awards
from the Istituto Italiano per gli studi filosofici, Naples, 1995, 1996, 1997
and 1998
·
Direct Research
Support Grant, Vanderbilt University Research Council, Summer 1996
·
Summer Research
Grant, Vanderbilt University Research Council, Italy 1992
PUBLICATIONS:
·
Dante’s Interpretive Journey (pp. 242
+ xi)
Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Religion and Postmodernism Series.
·
On What Cannot Be Said: Apophatic
Discourses in Philosophy, Religion, Literature, and the Arts. Vol. I:
“Classic Formulations.”
Vol. II: “Modern and Contemporary Transformations.”
Notre
Dame University Press: 2006.
forthcoming
43.
“From Altizer’s Apocalyptic Theology to Postmodern Negative
Theology:
Poetics of Revelation in Finnegans Wake”
Journal for Cultural and Religious
Theory
42.
“Primordial Sacrifice, Typology, and the Theological Vocation of
Literature:
Extending
Gian Balsamo’s Interpretation of Joyce and Christian Epic”
Literature and Theology
41. “Praising the Unsayable: An
Apophatic Defense of Metaphysics
Based
on the Neoplatonic Parmenides
Commentaries”
Epoché: A Journal for the History of
Philosophy
40. “Apophasis and the Turn of
Philosophy to Religion: From Neoplatonic Negative Theology to
Postmodern Negation
of Theology”
In
Self and Other: Essays in Continental
Philosophy of Religion, ed. Eugene Long,
Special issue of International
Journal for Philosophy of Religion (2006)
39.
“The Singular and the Other at the Limits of Language in the
Post-Holocaust Poetry
of Edmond Jabès and Paul Celan”
New Literary
History 36/4 (2005): 621-638
38. “Linguistic
Repetition as Theological Revelation in Christian Epic Tradition:
The
Case of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake”
Neophilologus 90/1 (2006): 155-172
37.
“The Rhetorical-Theological Presence of Romans in Dante:
A Comparison of Methods in Philosophical
Perspective”
In
The Letter to the Romans in Medieval
Tradition, eds. Peter Hawkins and Brenda Schildgen
(Society for Biblical
Literature, forthcoming)
36.
“Varieties and Valences of Unsayability in Literature”
Philosophy and Literature 29/2 (2005):
489-497
35.
“Franz Rosenzweig and the Emergence of a Post-Secular Philosophy of the
Unsayable”
International
Journal for Philosophy of Religion
58/3 (2005): 161-180
34.
“Virgil , History, and Prophecy”
Philosophy and Literature 29 (2005):
73-88
33.
“Damascius. Of the Ineffable:
Aporetics of the Notion of an Absolute Principle”
Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the
Classics 12/1 (2004): 111-31.
(Introduction with
original translation from the Greek of De
principiis, Part I, cc 3-8)
32.
“A Philosophy of the Unsayable: Apophasis and the Experience of Truth and
Totality.”
In Imaginatio
Creatrix, ed. A.-T. Tymieniecka, Analecta
Husserliana LXXXIII (2004): 65-83.
31.
“Truth and Interpretation in the Divine
Comedy”
In
Dante Modern Critical Views, ed. Harold
Bloom (Philadelphia: Chelsea, 2004), pp. 287-305.
(excerpt reprinted
from Dante’s Interpretive Journey,
pp. 5-23)
30.
“The Dialectical Logic of Yeats’s Byzantium Poems”
In
Poetry Criticism, vol. 51, ed. Carol
Ullman (Kennedale, TX: Gale Group, 2004)
[Reprinted from Yeats-Eliot Review 15, no. 3: 23-32]
29.
“The Exodus Epic: Universalization of History Through Ritual”
In
Universality and History: The Foundations
of Core, ed. Don Thompson, Darrel Colson, and J.
Scott Lee (Lanham-New
York-Oxford: University Press of America, 2002), pp. 59-70
28.
“The Interpretive Journey and the Allegory of Reading: Introduction to the Inferno as a Humanities
Text,” in Uniting
the Liberal Arts: Core and Context, ed. Bainard Cowen and J. Scott Lee
(Lanham-New
York-Oxford: University Press of America, 2002), pp 75-82
27.
“Literature as Liturgy and the Interpretive Revolution of Literary
Criticism”
Preface
to Gian Balsamo, Scriptural Poetics in
Finnegans Wake
(Lewisburg, New York: Edwin Mellin Press,
2002), pp. v-xiii
26.
“Il significato teologico del paesaggio di san Benedetto nel Paradiso di Dante”
Lo Speco CVII, no. 4 (2002): 80-82
25.
“William Franke on Post-Structuralist Interpratation”
In
Italo Calvino: Modern Critical Views, ed. Harold
Bloom (Philadelphia: Chelsea, 2001).
pp. 28-30.
[Reprint from “The
Deconstructive Anti-Logic of Italo Calvino’s Le città invisibili,” Italian Quarterly 30 (1989)].
24.
“Dante’s Address to the Reader en
face Derrida’s Critique of Ontology”
Annalecta Husserliana LXIX (2000):
119-131.
23.
“Prophecy Eclipsed: Hamlet as a Tragedy of Knowledge”
In
Core Texts in Conversation, eds. Jane
Kelley Rodeheffer, David Sokolowski, and J. Scott Lee
(Lanham-New
York-Oxford: University Press of America, 2000), pp. 149-154.
22.
“Metaphor and the Making of Sense:
The Contemporary Metaphor Renaissance”
Philosophy and Rhetoric 33/2 (2000): 137-154.
21.
“Apocalypse and the Breaking-Open of Dialogue: A Negatively Theological
Perspective”
International Journal for the Philosophy of
Religion 47 (2000): 65-86
20. “The Linguistic Turning of the Symbol: Baudelaire and his French Symbolist
Heirs”
In Baudelaire and the Poetics of Modernity,
volume in Honor of Claude Pichois, ed Patricia
Ward (Nashville:
Vanderbilt University Press, 2000), pp. 28-40.
19.
"Figuralism," “Albert the Great,”
“Constantine,” “Israel," “William II of
Sicily”
In
The Dante Encyclopedia (New York-London: Garland Publishing,
2000),
pp. 376-79, 11,
216-17, 524-525, 885-86.
18. “Eine
Kontextbestimmung der Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft--das Beispiel
Vanderbilt”
In
Allgemeine Literaturwissenschaft. Konturen und Profile im Pluralismus,
pp. 181-192
With
John McCarthy, ed. Carsten Zelle (Opladen/Wiesbaden, 1999)
17.
“Apocalyptic Poetry Between Metaphysics and Negative Theology: From Dante to Celan and Stevens”
Literature
and Belief 19/1,2 (1999): 261-284
16. “‘Enditynges
of Worldly Vanitees’: Truth
and Poetry in Chaucer as Compared with Dante”
The
Chaucer Review 87, no. 1
(1999): 87-106
15.
“The Dialectical Logic of Yeats’s Byzantium Poems”
Yeats-Eliot Review 15, no. 3 (Summer
1998): 23-32
14.
“Psychoanalysis as a Hermeneutics of the Subject: Freud, Ricoeur, Lacan”
Dialogue: The Canadian Philosophical Review 38
(1998): 65-81.
13.
“Reader’s Application and the Moment of Truth”
In
Dante: Contemporary Perspectives,
ed. Amilcare Iannucci (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1996), pp. 59-80.
[reprint,
revised of “Dante and Modern Hermeneutic Thought,”
Lectura Dantis: A Forum for Dante Research
and Interpretation 12 (1993):
34-52]
12.
“Blind Prophecy:
Milton’s Figurative Mode in Paradise
Lost”
In
Through A Glass Darkly: Essays in the Religious Imagination,
ed.
John Hawley (New York: Fordham University Press, 1996), pp. 87-103.
11.
“Resurrected Tradition and Revealed Truth: Dante’s Statius”
Quaderni d’italianistica 15/1-2
(1994): 7-34
10.
”Dante and the Poetics of Religious Revelation”
Symploke: A Journal for the Intermingling of
Literary, Cultural and Theoretical Scholarship
2/2 (1994): 103-116
9.
“Dante’s Hermeneutic Rite of Passage: Inferno
IX”
Religion and Literature 26/2
(1994): 1-26
8.
“In the Interstices Between Symbol and Allegory: Montale’s Figurative Mode”
Comparative Literature Studies 31/4 (1994): 370-89
7.
“Dante’s Address to the Reader and its Ontological
Significance”
Modern Language Notes 109 (1994): 117-127
6.
“Hermeneutic Catastrophe in Racine:
The Epistemological Predicament of 17th Century Tragedy”
Romanische Forschungen 105 (1993): 315-31
5.
“Poetics and Apocalypse in Manzoni’s Interpretation of
History”
Esperienze letterarie Anno XVIII - n. 4
(1993): 17-38
4.
“Dante and Modern Hermeneutic Thought”
Lectura Dantis: A Forum for Dante Research and
Interpretation 12 (1993): 34-52
3.
“The Logic of Infinity:
European Romanticism and the Question of Giacomo Leopardi”
Comparatio: Revue Internationale de
Littérature Comparée 1 (1990): 69-82
2.
“The Deconstructive Anti-Logic of Italo Calvino’s Le città invisibili”
Italian Quarterly 30 (1989): 31-41
1.
Note on "Robert Harrison’s The
Body of Beatrice"
Rivista di studi italiani 4 (1988): 78-82
forthcoming
“Dante”
in The Cambridge Dictionary of
Christianity forthcoming
“Le nom de Dieu comme
vanité du langage au fond de tout mot selon Edmond Jabes”
in
Edmond Jabès hors genre, hier et aujourd’hui
(CERISY) forthcoming
“Italian
Topographies as Metaphors for the Other World in the Paradiso”
Le Dimore
della Poesia, Acts of XVII Conference
of A.I.S.L.L.I. forthcoming
“Poetic Language,
Apocalypse, and the Premises for Dialogue Between a Secular West and Radical
Islam”
Acts
of Worlds in Discourse: Representations
of Realities
Critical
Reviews and Appreciations
Review
of Massimo Verdicchio, Of Dissimulation:
Allegory and Irony in Dante’s Commedia
in
Canadian Review of Comparative Literature
Review
of Warren Ginsberg, Dante and the
Aesthetics of Being
in
Speculum 76/3 (July 2001), 727-29
“Dante
and Modernism.” On David Pike’s Passage
through Hell: Modernist Descents,
Medieval Underworlds, review
article in Speculum 74/3 (1999):
68-71
“Diecimila
quadri ed anche qualcuno di più,” L’arte illustrata 5, November 1985
“Poesia
e politica si mescolano,” Tempi di
fraternità, August 1985
“Due
poeti e un libro,” Tempi di
fraternità, September 1986
Poetry
“The
Automocrat,” Only Poetry, Spring 1982
“Invocation
of Campion,” “Jenny Arranging Herself to Play Violin: an Appreciation by Her Pianist,”
“Passing
the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square,” California State Poetry Quarterly, Volume IX,
No.
1, 1982
“Contemporaries,”
California State Poetry Quarterly,
Volume X, No. 2, Summer 1983
“Dance
of the Shirts,” The Writer,
November 1984
“Letter
to a Friend,” “March,” SEAMS:
The Cultural Art Journal, Volume 2 No. 1, Fall 1985
“Free Riding I-IV,” SEAMS: The Cultural Arts Journal, Volume 2, No. 2 Winter-Spring 1986
“Glimpses I-IV,” SEAMS: The Cultural Arts Journal, Volume
2, No. 3, Summer-Fall 1986
“Limbo,”
“Faring Well in Arms,” “Lightspot”SEAMS: The Cultural Arts Journal, Volume 2, No. 4, Winter-Spring
1987
“Original
Lyric,” “Outsight,” BERKELEY
POETS 1987 (Rosenberg
Prize)
PUBLIC LECTURES AND CONFERENCE PAPERS:
“A Critical
Negative Theology of Language”
2006 Relgion and
Literature Lecture
University of Notre
Dame, October 2006
“Habermas’s Critical Reflexive Philosophy versus Premodern
Poetic and Theological Reflexivity”
12th
International Philosophy Colloquium: The Structure of
Reflection—Self-Conscioiusnes and Critique
Evian,
France, July 16-22, 2006
“’The
Missing All’: Emily Dickinson’s Apophatic Poetics”
College
English Association 37th Annual Conference,
San
Antonio, Texas, April 7, 2006
“Edmond
Jabès, or the Name of God as the Vanity of Language in the Heart of Every
Word”
XVIIth
Southeast Conference on Foreign Languages and Literatures
Stetson
University, Deland, Florida, March 3, 2006
“Primordial
Sacrifice, Typology, and the Theological Vocation of Literature in Finnegans Wake”
Lecture
for Department of Comparative Literature, University of Hong Kong
December
5, 2005
“Poetic
Language, Apocalypse, and the Premises for Dialogue: How a Secular West Can Face Radical
Islam.” Worlds in Discourse:
Representations of Realities, International Conference,
Universiti
Kebangsaan, Malaysia, November 21, 2005
“’Shadowy
Prefaces’: Literature,
Theology, and the Philosophy of Unsaying”
Lecture
for Department of Comparative Literature, University of Hong Kong,
November
8, 2005
“The Truth of
Art in Time and in Eternity:
Dante’s Divine Commedy”
Conference
on Art and Time, Australian National University, November 3, 2005
“The Death
of God and the Crisis of Values in Secular Modernity and Post-secular
Postmodernity”
Lecture
Series on Culture, Value, and the Meaning of Life
Department
of Philosophy, University of Hong Kong, September 28, 2005
“A Heideggerian
Reading of Prophetic Temporality in the Aeneid”
ACLA
(American Comparative Literature Association) Annual Convention
Penn
State University, March 11, 2005
“An Epistemology
of the Humanities as Involved Knowing”
National
Assocation for Humanities Education 2005 Convention
Richmond,
February 25, 2005
“What
Philosophical Criticism of Literature Can Do”
Seventh
Annual Comparative Literature Conference: ” Thinking on the Boundaries:
The Availability of Philosohpy in Film and Literature,” University of
South Carolina, February 11, 2005
“The Place of
the Proper Name in the Italian Topographies of the Paradiso”
MLA
(Modern Language Association) National Convention, Philadelphia, December 28,
2004
“Apophasis and the Neoplatonic Interpretation of Religious
Revelation”
AAR (American Academy of Religion) National Convention. Platonism
and Neoplatonism Group.
Philadelphia, November 21, 2004.
“Proper Names,
Singularities, and the Unnameable in the Topographies of Dante’s Paradiso”
Names
and the Unnameable: Literary Art and Spiritual Vision: 2004-05 Midwest Regional
Meeting of the Conference on Christianity and Literature, Notre Dame University
September 17, 2004
“Typological
Re-Origination and the Theological Vocation of Poetry”
Bloomsday
100: 19th International
James Joyce Symposium
Dublin,
Ireland, June 14, 2004
“Christian Epic
Tradition and Theological Revelation in ‘Finnegans Wake’”
Conference
on Christianity and Literature
Point
Loma Nazarene University, San Diego, March 27, 2004
“Negative
Theology in Dante’s Paradiso
after Derrida and Levinas”
Medieval
and Postmodern Intersections: NJCEA
27th Annual Conference
Seton
Hall University, March 20, 2004
“New
Interpretations of Joyce and Christian Epic”
Miami
Joyce Conference, January 30, 2004
“Primary
Metaphorization and the Origin of Language: Vico’s Heritage”
Session
on Italian Literature between Religion and Philosophy from Baroque Culture to
Romanticism
MLA
national convention, San Diego, December 28, 2003
“Dante and the
Secularization of Religion through Literature”
Divison
on Literature and Religion:
Religion and the Rise of Literary Studies
MLA
national convention, San Diego, December 27, 2003
Response to
papers on “The Letter to the Romans Through the Ages”
Society
for Biblical Literature at the AAR (American Academy of Religion) national
convention
Atlanta,
Georgia, November 22, 2003
"Dante's Ugolino,
or Narrative as the Instrument of Sin"
Session
on Ethics and Narrative
PAMLA
(Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Assoc.), Claremont College, November 8,
2003
“Le nom de Dieu comme
vanité du langage au fond de tout mot selon Edmond Jabes”
(“The Name of God as the Vanity of
Language at the Bottom of Every Word according to Edmond Jabès”)
Colloque
Jabès at CERISY (Centre Internationale de Culture)
Cerisy,
France, August 19, 2003
"Mystical
Rhetorics of Silence: Medieval to Modern"
Sixth International
Literature and Humanities Conference: “Inscriptions in the Sand,”
Eastern Mediterranean
University in Famagusta, Cyprus, June 1, 2003
“Paul
Celan’s Immemorial Silence”
ACLA (American Comparative Literature Association) annual convention: “Crossing Over”
San
Marcos, California, April 5, 2003
“Negative
Theology in the Neoplatonic Parmenides-Commentary Tradition
and
as Revived in Contemporary Apophatic Forms of Thinking”
Society
for the Contemporary Assessment of Platonism (SCAP)
American
Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, San Francisco, March 31, 2003
“Virgil’s Invention of History as Prophecy”
Comparative
Literature Conference:
“Imagning Rome”
California
State University, Long Beach, March 15, 2003
“Dante: Prophet and
Pioneer of Secular Humansim”
Conference
on Humanism, SUNY Stony Brook, February 28, 2003
“A Philosophy of
the Unsayable: Apophatic Discourses
from Plato to the Postmodern”
Vanderbilt
Philosophy Colloquium, October 11, 2002
“Joyce’s Typology and the Theological Vocation of
Poetry”
International
James Joyce Symposium, session on Joyce and the Bible
Trieste, Italy, June 21, 2002
“The Writing of
Silence in Post-Holocaust Poetry of Paul Celan and Edmond Jabès”
Phenomenology
and Literature Conference:
Aesthetics of Mystery in Poetry, Novel, Drama and Film
Cambridge,
Massachusetts, May 9, 2002
“Virgil’s
Invention of History as Prophecy”
Classical
Association of the Atlantic States, session on Augustan Latin Poetry
Cherry Hill, New Jersey, April 27, 2002
"Singularity,
Alterity, and the Unspeakable: Apophasis in Post-Holocaust Poetry and
Thought.” International
Phenomenological Symposium: “Singularity-Subjectivity-The
Other”
Perugia,
Italy, July 17, 2001
“On What
Cannot Be Said: Significances of Silence in Society, Philosophy, Religion,
Literature and
the
Arts,” McGill philosophy discussion hour
Vanderbilt, April 2, 2001
“Dante’s Paradiso and the Poetics of
Unsayability”
Presentation
at the Camargo Foundation, Cassis, France, November 18, 2000
“Topografie
italiane come metafore dell’altro mondo nel Paradiso dantesco”
(“Italian
Topographies as Metaphors for the Other World in the Paradiso”)
XVII
Conference of A.I.S.L.L.I.
(Associazione Internationale per gli Studi di Lingua e Letteratura Italiana)
on the topic “Le Dimore della Poesia”
(“The Dwellings of Poetry”)
Gardone
Riviera (Brescia), Italy, June 3, 2000
“Dante’s
Poetics of Exile”
International
Dante Seminar, invited as “discussant” by Società Dantesca
Italiana
Palazzo
Vecchio, Florence, June 9-11, 2000
“The Exodus
Epic: History and Ritual”
2000
Association for Core Texts and Curriculums (ACTC) Sixth Annual Conference
San
Francisco, April 15, 2000
“Theological
Apocalypse and the Breaking-Open of Dialogue in Literature: Some Political and Poetic Proposals for
the New Millenium.”
Comparative Literature Colloquium, Vanderbilt, January 25, 2000
“The Lyric
Poetics of the Paradiso”
1999
South Atlantic MLA Convention, Atlanta, November 6, 1999
“Inferno as a Humanities Text: The Interpretive Journey and the
Allegory of Reading”
1999
Association for Core Texts and Curriculums (ACTC) Fifth Annual Conference
New
Orleans, April 11, 1999.
“Poetry as
Apocalypse and as Negative Theology:
Dante to Paul Celan and Wallace Stevens”
Lecture
for the Department of French and Italian and Committe on Graduate Studies
Louisiana
State Universtiy, March 19, 1999
“Language as
Exile: The Poetics of
Ineffability”
(French
Graduate Conference on “Exile,” read for me in absentia by Prof.
Patricia Ward)
Vanderbilt
University, February 26, 1999
“Joyce and
Christian Epic Tradition:
Linguistic Repetition and Theological Revelation”
XVI International James Joyce
Symposium
Rome,
June 18, 1998
“Prophecy
Eclipsed: Hamlet as a Tragedy of Knowledge”
1998
Association for Core Texts and Curriculums (ACTC) Fourth Annual Conference
University
of North Carolina, April 19, 1998.
“Dante’s Address to the
Reader en face Derrida’s
Critique of Ontology”
XXII
Annual Phenomenology and Literature Congress,
The
World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning
Harvard University, April 16, 1998
“Theory of the
Symbol in French Symbolist Poetry:
Baudelaire’s Heirs”
L’ère
de Baudelaire: Symposium Honoring
Claude Pichois
W.T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire
Studies, Vanderbilt University, April 4, 1998
“Dante and
Derrida: Ontology and
Hermeneutics”
Philosophy
Colloquia Series, Department of Philosophy
Vanderbilt
University, February 20, 1998
“Dante’s
Vision of Scripture in the Heaven of Jove”
1997
MLA Conference:
Medieval/Renaissance Italian Division
Toronto,
December 30, 1997
“Apocalypse and
the Breaking-Open of Dialogue”
Colloquium
for History and Critical Theories of Religion Program,
The Robert Penn Warren Center for the
Humanities
Vanderbilt
University, 3 December, 1997
“Poetry Between
Metaphysics and Negative Theology:
From Dante to Celan”
Symposium
on The Tradition of Metaphysical Poetry and Belief, November 1, 1997
Center for the Study of Christian
Values in Literature, Brigham Young University
“Dante’s
Comet: Apocalyptic Poetry and its
After-Sparks”
Symposium
on History, Apocalypse and the Secular Imagination
University
of British Columbia, September 19, 1997
“An Evening
Around William Franke and his Dante’s
Interpretive Journey”
Religious
Studies Department, Vanderbilt University, September 8, 1997.
“Humanities
Knowledge and the Bible”
1997
Association for Core Texts and Curriculums (ACTC) Third Annual Conference