SYNAPSIS – European School of Comparative Literature - Call for Applications
SYNAPSIS – EUROPEAN SCHOOL OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
San Miniato (Italy), 22-26 September 2025
Knots, Bonds
Date: September 22–26, 2025
Location: San Miniato, PI (Italy)
Synapsis 2025 Theme: Knots, Bonds
Application Deadline: June 30, 2025
Participation, including registration, accommodation in San Miniato, and meals, is free of charge.
Link: https://www.sns.it/it/evento/synapsis-european-school-comparative-literature
Organized by Scuola Normale Superiore, in collaboration with the Italian Association for the Theory and Comparative History of Literature.
Who Is It For
Synapsis is a summer school where students and lecturers from diverse backgrounds come together annually to collaborate and exchange ideas on a specific defined topic. It is open to students from EU countries who hold an MA, PhD, or an equivalent degree and are interested in studying literature from a comparative perspective. Participation is limited to a maximum of 40 students, selected by a special committee based on the documents submitted with their application. These include a curriculum vitae, a description of their current research in comparative literature, and a list of the languages they speak.
How the School Works
The Scientific Committee selects the theme for each year's courses and appoints lecturers from among the most distinguished international specialists. The one-week residential programme features a full schedule of lectures, seminars, individual tutoring, and film screening theatre plays. The course concludes with the presentation of seminar outcomes and student research projects developed during the school. The texts of the lectures, along with essays produced by students based on their research conducted at the school, may be considered for publication. English is the official language of Synapsis. Lectures are delivered in English, and post-lecture discussions are conducted in English. However, contributions in English, Italian, French, German, and Spanish are permitted, with the organising team providing prompt translations into English. Seminars are held in Italian, English, and French.
What Participants Will Do
Participants are expected to attend the morning lectures, scheduled from Monday to Friday between 9:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., as well as one of the three afternoon seminars, held daily from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. The seminars will be conducted in different languages: Massimo Fusillo will lead the Italian seminar, Barry McCrea the English seminar, and Helena Buescu the French seminar.
In the application form, candidates must indicate their preferred seminar, along with an alternative choice. The course organisers reserve the right to assign participants to a different seminar if necessary to ensure a balanced distribution. A prerequisite for participation in the chosen seminar is familiarity with a minimum bibliography recommended by the lecturers, which will be communicated to admitted participants in advance.
Evening sessions will take place after dinner at 9:00 p.m., featuring activities related to the course theme, including a film screening and a night of theatrical readings. Students with the most promising projects may be invited to continue their research in the months following the summer school, culminating in the writing of an academic essay. This extended research will be supervised by the seminar lecturers and tutors, with additional guidance from relevant faculty members when available. A follow-up meeting is planned for the spring of the following year, where selected participants and lecturers will present some of the outcomes of their work.
Certificate of Attendance
Synapsis awards a certificate of attendance equivalent to 6 ECTS credits, corresponding to approximately 100 hours of academic activities and study. These include preparatory work for the seminar (familiarity with the recommended bibliography), participation in one seminar, attendance at lectures, and engagement in the three evening events.
Participation in a second seminar, the development of a research project, and potential publication are optional.
Professors
Massimo Fusillo (Italian), Helena Buescu (French), and Barry McCrea (English) will lead the seminars. The full programme will be announced at a later date.
Application Process
To apply for Synapsis 2025, candidates must submit the completed application form, attached below, to the following email address: synapsis2025@gmail.com.
Applications are open from to June 30th, 2025.
Participation, including registration, accommodation in San Miniato, and meals, is free of charge.
A committee appointed by the organising board will review the applications and select the participants. Successful candidates will receive a confirmation email, which will include the bibliography for their chosen seminar.
All inquiries can be directed to: synapsis2025@gmail.com
The Theme: Knots, Bonds
Etymological Significance
The very etymology of the word “knot” [Ger. Knoten, from Proto-West Germanic *knuttô, knudô; and Ital. nodo, Fr. nœud, Sp. nudo, from Lat. nōdus—both likely deriving from the Proto-Indo-European *gnod- meaning “to bind”] already hints at its ambivalent nature. On one hand, a knot carries a positive connotation: it unites, creates or consolidates bonds, and provides structure and organization. On the other hand, it signifies constraint, difficulty, or a problem. Knots interlace to weave and gather scattered threads into a unified whole, constructing structure from disjointed, formless elements. Yet, they also appear as challenges to be undone—necessary to reopen the realm of possibilities, break free from the web of necessity, or rediscover the straight path toward a destiny, the culmination of an existential or intellectual quest. Whether tying knots or untying them, this theme frames our potential journey—both in terms of content (where the knot symbolically condenses a broader thematic network: pact, bond, tie, enigma, difficulty) and in formal structures (knot/weave/net/thread).
Knot as a Theme
The knot, as a symbol of bond and pact, is one of the archetypes in mythical and religious narratives: an emblem of promise and the tie between the human and the divine that confers a unique sense of meaning and absolute privilege on its bearers, yet it also imposes an obligatory limitation. A pact guarantees privilege at the cost of sacrifice: untying the knot means relinquishing paradise and risking a wandering existence without bonds or direction—or it could mean perpetually chasing the lost tie, in a (often futile) attempt to rebind what was once untied (“a people, a land, a promise”).
Classical comedy weaves ever tighter knots, only to eventually resolve them all when escape seems impossible—thanks either to chance interventions (chance encounters, rediscoveries, misunderstandings) or a deus ex machina, which establishes new pacts and bonds that restore harmony and concord. In parallel, tragedy presents knots that cannot be untied—conflicts between irreconcilable passions, between duties and ethical imperatives in opposition, or between instinctual impulses and rational constraints—leading inexorably to the final catastrophe (Frye 1957, Szondi 1961, Bakhtin 1968, Steiner 1984).
Continuing along this dichotomy, the romance unfolds a network of characters who either ally with or obstruct each other in pursuit of desired fortunes. Here, knots symbolize both the bonds that are formed—or broken—among characters (friendships, alliances, loves) and the obstacles (adventures, spells, chases) that must be untangled or resolved to achieve the triumph of the virtuous and the downfall of the wicked. Perhaps the most evocative (and consciously metanarrative) image is Ariosto’s ingenious invention of the palace of Atlas—a labyrinth created by the intertwining paths of knights, each chasing his own object of desire, a tangle from which escape seems impossible until, when the magic ceases, the knots come undone and the plot begins anew with fresh entanglements. Not to mention the fantastical variant of the pact with the devil (money, power, success, or love in exchange for one’s soul: it is the knot that indissolubly binds Faust and Mephistopheles until the controversial final unraveling).
Narrative and Narratological Knots
One meaning of the term “plot” is precisely the gradual structuring of connections and knots among events, characters, and situations (Brooks 1992, Kukkonen 2014). This notion is evident in discussions of neoclassical drama as a structure that links the “threads” of the plot and presents the “nœuds” of complications, leading to the final unraveling (dénouement). In E. M. Forster’s influential definition, the plot is the set of “causally connected story events”: while a simple narrative might list events (“The king died, and then the queen died”), it is the plot that establishes the causal link—“The king died, and then the queen died of grief” ([1927] 1953: 82). This classical understanding of plot has branched out into several theoretical perspectives—from classical structuralism, which sees the narrative weave as a network underlying the story that can be reconstructed through its connections and narrative knots, to reception and reader-response studies, which emphasize the ongoing construction/deconstruction/reconstruction of the plot during reading, and even to the theory of possible worlds, which introduces additional layers of potential developments and scenarios—desired or feared—rendering the narrative a multidimensional network, elusive to any final formalization (Ryan 1991, Dannenberg 2008). It is precisely this endless cascade of potential connections and narrative threads that has become a central theme in postmodern storytelling, where the attempt to circumscribe the plot and its meaning becomes a metanarrative metaphor for the impossible search for comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the world.
Conceptual Knots as Hermeneutical Operations
From an epistemological perspective, the knot expresses an opacity that resists interpretation and the quest for meaning (the “gnommero” of Gadda cited in the epigraph). Faced with this, literary and artistic representation may either succumb to the labyrinth or transform the knot into a point of reference within a complex, entangled system—a map as evoked by Fredric Jameson (1991). In this way, the knot becomes a connective point within a network or map, symbolizing the stubborn attempt to impose order and create structure in opposition to chaos and meaninglessness. The knots thus weave the plot of a design so delicate that it escapes the bite of termites—much like the one Marco Polo might still offer Kublai Khan to avoid the decay of a formless, endless postmodern empire (Calvino, Invisible Cities).
Bibliography
Bakhtin, M.M. (1968) Rabelais and His World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Bremond, Claude (1973). Logique du récit. Paris: Seuil.
Brooks, Peter ([1984] 1992). Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard UP
Dannenberg, Hilary P. (2008). Coincidence and Counterfactuality: Plotting Time and Space in Narrative Fiction. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P.
Forster, E. M. ([1927] 1953). Aspects of the Novel. London: E. Arnold
Frye, N. (1957). Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton: Princeton UP.
Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham NC: Duke UP.
Kukkonen, Karin (2014). "Plot". In: Hühn, Peter et al. (eds.): the living handbook of narratology. Hamburg: Hamburg University. URL = http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/article/plot
Mazzoni, G. (2011). Teoria del romanzo. Bologna: Il Mulino (Theory of the Novel. Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 2017)
Moretti, F. (1987). The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture. New York: Verso.
Moretti, F. (2022). Falso movimento, Milano: Nottetempo.
Ryan, Marie-Laure (1991). Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana UP.
Steiner, G. (1984). Antigones. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Szondi, P. (1961). Versuch über das Tragische. Berlin: Insel.
How To Apply
Fill up the application below and send it to:
Communications concerning the school will be sent via e-mail: applicants need therefore to have an e-mail address. No material or information will be sent by regular mail.
A committee appointed by the organisers will examine all applications and select 40 participants for the school. Successful candidates will receive a confirmation message as soon as the selection process is completed.
Applications should be sent between May 2nd and June 30th, 2025.
Participation in the school (including accommodation) is free of charge.
Application procedure:
Applicants wishing to participate in Synapsis 2025 must complete an application form in which they indicate:
- degrees/qualifications held and degrees/qualifications for which they are currently studying
- the languages they know
- the seminar they wish to attend (plus a second choice)
- their choice of room (double or single). We will do our best to take account of this preference on a first come, first served basis.
- whether they have attended previous editions of Synapsis
Applicants must also send a curriculum vitae indicating:
· the subject of their Bachelor's/Master's dissertation
· the university they graduated from
· the topic (where applicable) of their doctoral thesis, either in progress or completed
· the university where they submitted their doctorate or where they are studying for it
· any publications
· professor(s) with whom they have worked
· supervisor of their research or thesis
· current research or research projects in Comparative Literature.
Application form
In order to apply, simply complete this form and send it (together with your CV) to
The undersigned (first and last name):
Sex:
Born in (city / region / country):
on:
Resident in (city / street / Zip code):
Citizenship:
holder of the following degrees and the following titles/qualifications (indicate here any other relevant qualifications):
Submission of doctoral thesis (yes/no):
Languages known:
First choice seminar:
Second choice seminar:
REQUESTS
to be admitted to Synapsis 2025:
I wish to attend the theatre workshop: yes/no
I wish to attend the movie projection: yes/no
I would prefer to be allocated a single/double room<o:p></o:p>
I attach my curriculum vitae.
(Date)
Name
Address for communications:
- address:
- telephone number and/or fax:
- e-mail: