9th Annual McGill University Graduate Student Symposium on Language and
Literature
"Blood Lust, Blood Loss: Representations of Struggle and Desire"
March 22-23, 2003
Montreal, Quebec
"The purple testament of bleeding war": Presentation and Representation in
Twentieth-Century War Literature
This panel will explore the relationship between testimony and realism in
twentieth-century war literature. Beginning with the First World War, the
war poet's insistence that the brutal realities of war be represented in
literature, oftentimes in excruciating detail, is an extension of the
testimonial activity—these things were done, and some have survived to tell
what has been done. Such writers are in a position to tell the "truth" of
war because of their accurate representation of the actual conditions of
modern warfare. In representing the war, however, these writers also
interpret what the war means to those who find themselves victims of it. The
question for the literary critic is whether any of these aspects of war
literature define the particular value which makes the war text culturally
and humanly significant.
Papers may address any or all aspects of war, conflict and resolution,
though papers focusing on texts and events of the First and Second World
Wars will be especially relevant to this panel's concerns. Possible topics
include the relationship between war and words, combat gnosticism, trauma
and memory, art as testimony, and the ethics of representation. Among the
questions this panel seeks to consider: In what ways do war writers give us
the most mimetic representation of actual warfare? Is there an ethical
contest between the perception of war and the representation of it? To what
extent do works of literature that bear witness to any account of war enrich
or diminish our cultural understandings of war?
Send 250 word paper proposals (no attachments please) by February 15th to:
D.B. Yanofsky
db.yanofsky@mail.mcgill.ca
For further information, please visit our conference website at:
http://www.arts.mcgill.ca/programs/english/symposium9.html
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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
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