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Architectural historians typically rely on histories for facts, and treatises for theories. A much wider range of texts records the reception of real buildings, the capacity to imagine fantastic ones, and the structural reciprocity between architecture and literature: poetry, dramaturgy, the picaresque novel, inauguration or consecration speeches, travelogues, epigraphy, and so on.
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鈥楢rchitecture鈥� includes cities, civic buildings, palaces, villas, housing, individual rooms, gardens, grottoes, the constructions of nature itself, fountains, monuments, engineering, and decorations from vault painting to topiary. Our focus is largely Europe, but encompasses the Ottoman Empire, all territories ringing the Mediterranean basin, and descriptions of architecture transmitted by the global missions of the Church or travellers.听听
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The source language may be in any vernacular, and we are also interested in Neo-Latin, Neo-Greek, and Classical Arabic as legacy languages of cultural transmission across history and borders.
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A particular theoretical concern is the intermedial relationship between immaterial words and solid buildings 鈥� however that may be defined.
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A collection of essays from the conference will be published, subject to peer review, in an edited volume of the new book series,听Architecture & the Literary Imagination听(Harvey Miller Publishers, series editors, Fabio Barry & Paul Gwynne).
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Papers will be 30 minutes in length and preferably in either English or Italian. Please send an abstract of 200 words by 1 October听to: Fabio Barry (rabirius@cantab.net)听& Paul Gwynne (p.gwynne@aur.edu)
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Architecture & the Literary Imagination.听1350-1750
91直播 of Rome
Via Pietro Roselli, 4, 00153 Roma RM
6-8 November 2025