As part of the long-standing bilateral collaboration between Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb—a partnership that has, in addition to conferences, resulted in the publication of bilingual (English–German) edited volumes with Praesens Verlag and Böhlau Verlag—the Centre co-organised the international conference “Vitality, Life and Organicism in Literature and Literary Theory – in the 20th Century and Beyond”, held on 9–10 October 2025 at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest.
The growing technological transformation of modern life during the Modernist period created a need to re-examine inherited post-Romantic models of European art and literature. Although the Romantic cult of nature and the notion of “organic form” were largely rejected, a new need emerged to distinguish art and literature from the technologies of everyday communication. This gave rise to various neo-organicist, naturalist, and vitalist theories that sought to define the relationship between life and art.
Such concepts — including imitation, inspiration, and participation of life in literature — were closely connected to broader social and cultural understandings of the role of art. In the 20th century, the use of biological metaphors in literary theory became particularly prominent, and the conference participants sought to explore, through presentations and discussions, the connections between science, the concept of life, and literature, with particular focus on the contexts of Central and South-Eastern Europe.
You can find the conference programme here: https://www.btk.elte.hu/dstore/document/10583/Vitality_plakát_6.pdf
