PROJECT SUMMARY

Project number FR/412/1-20/14

"The Man in the Panther Skin" with com m entaries based on m odern Project Title Rustaveli Studies

1-20 Georgian Literature; Research subdirection/ subdirections 1-31 Language Corpora of Georgian; 1-999 other;

Name of the leading organization Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University

Web tsu.edu.ge

Name of the co-participating organization Fund for Kartvelian Studies

Web kartvfund.org.ge

Project Budget (Lari) 149598

Project duration (in month) 36

Personnel

Key Personnel Nam e, Suram e Position in the project Academ ic degree Date of bitrh

1 Elguja Khintibidze Principal Investigator სრული პროფესორი 1937-06-07 2 Darejan Tvaltvadze Investigator Doctor 1958-05-20 3 Zaza Khintibidze Investigator Doctor 1963-09-05

Project Summary

"The Man in the Panther Skin" (MPS) was com m ented on, at different tim es, from various social, religious, ideological or philosophical positions. The m ost ancient exam ple of this is "Targm aneba vepkhistkaosnisa" ("Com m entaries on the MPS")' published by the educated King, Vakhtang VI, in the beginning of the XVIII c. In the XX c. Georgian philology gradually created a solid foundation for a purely scholarly study of the MPS (Nikolay Marr, Korneli Kekelidze, Akaki Shanidze, Mose Gogiberidze, Shalva Nutsubidze, Viktor Nozadze, Alexandr Baram idze, Giorgi Tsereteli...). All the research, except for rare, exceptional cases, relied on ideological positions popular in that period and seldom took into consideration the specific stage of the developm ent of the literary and religious-philosophical thought which nurtured Rustaveli's Epic poem . At Tbilisi State University the rebirth of Rustaveli Studies was connected m ainly with Professor Elguja Khintibidze’s nam e. Nowadays, the new theory regarding the place of Rustaveli in the process of Christian and European literary thought, proposed by E. Khintibidze, is widely known to the scholars interested in the issue. This conception is based on m ore than 100 scholarly articles and 6 m onographs published by the author, in this direction, in Georgian and English, in and abroad, On the basis of scholarly interpretation of im portant textual passages, literary im ages, philosophical, theological or astrological and ethical concepts of the MPS, scholastic term s, concepts of love, friendship and cosm ological m odels of the world as well as that of "love your neighbour" and having analysed principle sources of Rustaveli's worldview (Ancient Philosophy, Christian Theology and Late Medieval Scholasticism ) E. Khintibidze proposed a new theory regarding the worldview and place occupied by Rustaveli in the process of Christian and in particular, European literary, philosophical and social public opinion. The conception proposed by Professor E. Khintibidze links Rustaveli’s worldview to the transient epoch from the Middle Ages to , which fuse without any apparent controversial Medieval and Renaissance trends.In the past decade the breadth of E. Khintibidze's research in Rustaveli Studies has gone beyond the scopes of Georgian Studies. It was revealed by him that the MPS was used as a source by the Royal Court playwrights of the XVII c. England, Francis Beaum ont and John Fletcher. More specifically, the rom ance between Tariel and Nestan from the MPS served as the basis for the plot of two extrem ely popular plays during the XVII c, "Philaster" and "A King and no King". This discovery was presented by the scholar twice at International Congresses and published in London as a m onograph in 2011. Professor E. Khintibidze also proposed the way the story of the MPS m ust have reached the English intellectual circles. By the research conducted during recent years E. Khintibidze has proved that used the love story of Nestan and Tariel from the MPS as one of his plot sources. The plot of a well-known play by Shakespeare, which belongs to the latest period of his creative activity, "Cym beline", was based on the MPS as its m ain plot source. This significant discovery m ade by the Georgian scholar has already been published in Georgian and English and has recently been delivered in the USA at the International Congress on Medieval Studies. The present project aim s to study Rustaveli’s poem regarding the newly-m ade discoveries, on the basis of the m ethodology of the proposed new theory; to interpret the whole text of the MPS consecutively, regarding its stanzas, sections and separate episodes. It will be an absolute novelty in Georgian Studies to identify and com m ent on the literary im ages and parallels em erging in English dram aturgy of the XVII c. on the basis of the im ages and passages of the MPS as well as to dem onstrate their evaluation. For the first tim e in the history of Georgian Studies com plete scholarly com m entaries of the text of the MPS will be created and published electronically. Moreover, the im plem entation of the project in the described m anner will lay the foundation for the im plem entation, in the future, of two im portant projects, based on this scholarly work: 1. Creation of the English version of the scholarly com m entaries of the MPS and its electronic publication as well as a printed book, which is extrem ely im portant due to the intensively expressed dem and by the foreign translators of the MPS as well as for the European literary criticism ( especially since the discovery that Rustaveli's poem was such an im portant source at the initial stages of New European Literature); 2. Creation of printed and electronic publications of the parallel scholarly textual interpretation of the Poem by Rustaveli intended m ainly for secondary and tertiary education.