I apologize for the short notice of this cfp (deadline 18 February
2002); I have met with some unavoidable changes in potential panelists’
plans.
Through the Post: Women, Letters, and Victorian Fiction
Proposed Session
2002 M/MLA Annual Convention
8-10 November 2002, Minneapolis, MN
It was commonplace, especially throughout the eighteenth century, to
equate letters with writing women did well. In part because of such
associations, the epistolary novel is typically seen as a feminine
genre. And though the traditional epistolary novel did not thrive in
the Victorian period, nineteenth-century British fiction did not see an
end to women writing letters. Brontë’s Lucy Snowe, Gaskell’s Cranford
community, Trollope’s Lizzie Eustace, and Stoker’s Mina Harker are only
a few of the more memorable female letter-writers and letter-readers to
populate the Victorian novel. This panel explores the significance of
this feminine epistolary presence in the Victorian novel, specifically
as it pertains to the letters’ capacity to comment on women’s position
in the literary world.
Through the Post: Women, Letters, and Victorian Fiction, a session I
plan to propose for the 2002 M/MLA Annual Convention in Minneapolis,
Minnesota (8-10 November 2002), will look at questions such as:
—what literary and/or social traditions do these women’s letters adopt,
adapt, and/or critique and why?
—do the women’s letters "compete" with men’s letters and/or other types
of writing within these novels, and what issues arise from the
comparisons and contrasts?
—how does the women’s letter-writing comment on novels’ "proper"
subjects, their ability to appeal to audiences, their capacity for
expressing women’s concerns?
—what is the effect of women novelists’ or fictional female characters’
use of letters on the "definition" of the Victorian novel or the
Victorian novelist?
These questions are not the only possible ones to consider; I encourage
a diversity of approaches. Please send 1-page abstracts by 18 February
2002 to ler556@mizzou.edu or Laura Rotunno, Department of English, 107
Tate Hall, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211. Also feel free
to write me with any questions.
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