CALL FOR PAPERS
"Ethical Narrative Language"
Panel sponsored by
The Society for the Study of Narrative Literature
Modern Language Association Convention
December 27-30, 2003
San Diego, California
Critical discussions of ethics and literature tend to
focus on how overt themes or covert politics construct
the ethical center of a particular text. However, in
avant-garde literature as well as in more traditional
narrative genres, language use itself can be projected
as an ethical experiment. Language experiments in
narrative--such as erasure or manipulation of
description and metaphor, use of language games such
as palindromes and lipograms, choice of literary
style, blending of narrative genres and modes--may and
have been construed at times as attempts to pose
ethical (as
well as epistemological and aesthetic) questions
through the medium of narrative.
This panel will address how narrative media might or
might not be a vehicle for ethical questioning. Papers
submitted should not be thematic analyses of stories
but rather should address broader theoretical
questions such as the following:
* What is the difference between an ethics of
narrative conceived at the level of medium (language)
and an ethics of narrative conceived at the level of
"theme"?
* Is there a difference between an ethics of language
and a politics of language?
* How does medium become ethical message--that is, how
does form reflect ethical function--in narrative?
* What types of narratives convey ethical
concerns at the level of language? How might we need
to redefine "narrative" to encompass new media forms
(such as hypertext fiction or mixed-form electronic
texts) that allow language to raise new ethical
questions?
* What is the difference between language ethics in
non-fictional sources (news stories, nonfiction,
public speeches, historical accounts, etc.) and in
fictional narratives? Is authorial intention the only
term we have to describe this difference? How might
the terms of rhetoric help us or hinder us in
describing the ethics of language in fictional
narratives?
* Is narratology, as some claim, necessarily
alienated from ethics or evaluation of narrative
ethical import?
* Beyond banal assertions in one form or another that
"reading makes us better people," is the activity of
grappling with narrative *language* ethical in any
real
and meaningful way? Does cognitive science (or
narratology, or ethics itself) address this question?
Specifically in terms of narrative, in what sense is
the aesthetic also the ethical?
* What were the historical outcomes of some
attempts to look at narrative language as ethical
activity, and what can we learn from this critical
past?
300-word proposals and brief vitae summaries (1-page)
should be sent IN TEXT (please: no attachments) to:
Amy J. Elias <aelias2@utk.edu>.
DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF PROPOSALS: March 15, 2003
Please note: this is not an MLA special session; it
has been approved for the convention program.
Information about the Modern Language Association's
annual meeting can be found at <http://www.mla.org>.
Information about the Society for the Study of
Narrative Literature (SSNL) can be found at
<http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/english/clayton/narrative>.
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