CFP: NOSTALGIA IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRITISH POETRY
(SEAC)
Ecole Normale Supérieure - Lettres et Sciences Humaines,
15, parvis René Descartes
BP 7000
69342 Lyon Cedex
France
24/10/2003- 25/10/2003
The ENS-LSH in English:
http://www.ens-lsh.fr/ri/venir/anglais/intro/index.htm
Société d'Etudes Anglaises Contemporaines
http://perso.worldonline.fr/ebc
It might seem paradoxical to consider the century of the Modernist
avant-garde from the point of view of nostalgia. However, nostalgia
manifests itself in twentieth-century British poetry in a multitude of
ways. Papers for the conference could consider such topics as:
- The specificity of twentieth-century nostalgia, a nostalgia that
would be aesthetically different from Romantic and nineteenth-century
nostalgia (as Romantic Irony is from Dramatic Irony?); the question of
whether, for example, twentieth century primitivism (Shamanism, for
example) is comparable to Romantic primitivism (the Folk / National
past), or whether the functioning of Nostalgia in High Modernism and in
Anti-Modernism and Post-Modernism is aesthetically distinct.
- The use in the twentieth century of particular poetic forms with a
nostalgic potential like elegy, pastoral, eclogues, idylls, bucolics...
Does the return of forms such as the villanelle or the sestina reveal an
"antiquarian" strain in the century's poetry, and, if so, is the
"antiquarian" necessarily nostalgic?
- The rhythms, timing and time of nostalgia: is the use of certain
pre-Modernist prosodic devices an inherently nostalgic device in the
twentieth century - the marker of a reticence about the present?
- The productivity of certain structuring topoi :
- the politics of nostalgia: "memories" of moments of political grandeur
in the constructions of Englishness, of Welshness, of Scottishness, of
Irishness; the artisan, the working class as locuses of nostalgia;
- the countryside as a focus of nostalgia;
- themes like Childhood, Brief Encounters, Epiphanies, Spots of Time,
the longing for the authentic, for presence, for contact, for origins;
- certain (intertextual) constructions, such as pagan, Classical,
Christian or Matriarchal pasts;
- The critical construction of regretted moments of "aesthetic
intensity" - bardic cultures in Celtic traditions, Romanticism or the
Metaphysicals for the English;
- Nostalgia as a dream of the future in programmatic texts;
- Nostalgia in critical works, histories of poetry, biographies of
poets, introductions to anthologies, National Poetry Days etc;
- The trope of the annus mirabilis, the "creative moment",etc; nostalgia
as a rewriting of the past - indeed, of a past that has never existed.
A selection of papers (in English) will be published in ETUDES
BRITANNIQUES CONTEMPORAINES after the conference.
Proposals in English (200 words for a 25 minute paper) to be sent to
Professor Paul Volsik (at:- volsik@paris7.jussieu.fr) before the end of
MARCH 2003. Decision on acceptance by the scientific committee (SEAC)
before Easter 2003.
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CFP@english.upenn.edu
Full Information at
http://www.english.upenn.edu/CFP/
or write Erika Lin: elin@english.upenn.edu
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