William Gibson's cyberpunk novel, *Neuromancer*, even as it invented the
future now up on the screen in The Matrix, winked back at the past with his
evocative title. 'Neuron' 'Romancer' for sure, but also, 'New' 'Romance'
--or 'New Romantic'. The connections between science fiction and romanticism
are not limited to cyberpunk allusion. The claim that Mary Shelley
'invented' science fiction in *Frankenstein* and *The Last Man* has been
made for some time, while the continued reworkings of the former in film and
novel argue for its foundational importance to the genre. Other authors
could be offered as inventors--William Godwin's alternative history in *St.
Leon*, Percy Shelley's *Queen Mab*'s utopic imagininings, Edgar Allan Poe's
balloon hoaxes--but the very Wordsworthian phrase, 'something ever more
about to be' suggests how important the future was to romanticism.
A propos of the millenium, *Romanticism on the Net* will devote a special
issue to science fiction and romanticism in February 2001. Articles on
science fiction's roots in romanticism and romanticism's persistence in
science fiction will be welcome. More broadly, we will also welcome papers
about scientific imagining in the period. Finally, how does seeing
romanticism as 'science fiction' enable us to see it differently? Potential
contributors might be interested in the bibliography 'Fictional
Representations of Romantics and Romanticism', available at Romantic Circles
<http://www.rc.umd.edu/reference/ficrep/nassr-sf.html>.
Submission deadline: 15 February 2000. For more information, please contact
Robert Corbett (rcor@u.washington.edu).
------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Eberle-Sinatra
Editor *Romanticism On the Net*
------------------------------------------------------------
Northrop Frye Centre, Victoria University
73 Queenıs Park Crescent, Toronto
Ontario M5S 1K7, Canada
------------------------------------------------------------
** NEW email address: michael.eberle.sinatra@utoronto.ca **
------------------------------------------------------------
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~scat0385
(US mirror site: http://www-sul.stanford.edu/mirrors/romnet/)
------------------------------------------------------------
===============================================
From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
CFP@english.upenn.edu
Full Information at
http://www.english.upenn.edu/CFP/
or write Erika Lin: elin@english.upenn.edu
===============================================
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Feb 09 2000 - 13:50:41 EST