CFP: Versions of Pastoral: The Bucolic Tradition in Anglophone Literature from 1780s to the present (UK) (9/5/05; 11/26/05)

One-Day International Conference

Venue: Avenue Campus, University College Northampton, Avenue Campus, St.
Georges Avenue, Northampton Northamptonshire, NN2 6JD

Versions of Pastoral: The Bucolic Tradition in Anglophone Literature
from 1780s to the present

Saturday 26th November, 2005

The English Department, University College Northampton and the UK Network
for Modern Fiction Studies announce a forthcoming one-day conference on the
theme of the Pastoral Tradition in Anglophone Literature from 1780s to the
present. This seems particularly appropriate in the county where John Clare
was born, and incarcerated. Equally this is the centenary year of H. E.
Bates, author of the masterful Larkin saga once celebrated on television.

William Empson described pastoral as "putting the complex into the simple".
The Arcadian or Bucolic traditions are often either misunderstood or
misrepresented as simply conservative nostalgia. Both in origin and in
practice the dynamics of such texts are far more adaptable, fluid and
capable of complex ideological negotiations. One contemporary monograph in
the area, E. Kegel-Brinkgreve's The Echoing Woods: Bucolic and Pastoral from
Theocritus to Wordsworth (1990), identifies as characteristic of the
Arcadian variously the "Generally negative aspects of life like labour,
pain, decay, primitive sexuality, quarrelling," and, "formally the
life-likeness is evoked by the in media res technique . . . ." (26) as
well as allegory, unexplained, unlocatable, geographic details.
Traditionally concerned with the relationship of the country and the town,
one focus has been from the classical period an awareness that "the
town-dweller's disdain for the simple life of the rustic mingles with praise
of its attractions . . . ."

Papers are invited on any of the following topics, but topics not listed,
such as the important American tradition, are equally welcome:

- Arcadian desire

- Eco-political perspectives

- Nostalgia, myth and history

- Ref to Modernism, Postmodernism, and Romanticism

- Lyrical and Poetic Influences and intertextuality

- Industrialization and de-industrialization

- Late modernity and the pastoral

- The English Country House

- The British Village in Literature

- Urban Pastoral

- The Rural Detective

- The Hardyesque

- Bucolic Poetry

- Romanticisms Affect (Influence) upon the Pastoral

- Travel Writing About Rural and Provincial Britain

- The Garden City and the Suburbs

- Children's Literature

- Representing the British countryside

Please note that panels on relevant themes are welcome from groups of
individuals and subject associations.

Authors & writers might include amongst others: William Blake; John Clare;
S. T. Coleridge; John Keats; William Wordsworth; Mrs. Barbauld; Charlotte
Smith; Ann Yearsley; Sydney Dobell; Robert Browning; Elizabeth Barrat
Browning; Matthew Arnold; Alfred Lord Tennyson; Charles Dickens; Mrs.
Gaskell; George Eliot; Thomas Hardy; Kenneth Grahame; Charles Kingsley;
Christina Rossetti; William Morris; Rudyard Kipling; Robert Baden Powell; A.
A. Milne; E. M. Forster; D.H. Lawrence, H. E. Bates, Joanna Trollope, Adam
Thorpe, Margery Allingham; Agatha Christie; Margery Allingham; Virginia
Woolf; T. S. Eliot; Evelyn Waugh; Dylan Thomas; Kazuro Ishiguro; Rupert
Thomson; Laurie Lee; John Cowper Powys; Theodore Francis Powys; Raymond
Williams; Laurie Lee; Rupert Thomson; Bruce Chatwin; Bill Bryson; Nicholas
Pevsner; John Betjeman; Ted Hughes; Sylvia Plath; T. S. Eliot; W. H. Auden,
etc. etc.

Conference Date: Saturday 26th November, 2005

Abstract details: 200 words by e-mail with "Versions of Pastoral" in the
e-mail subject line, as these will be sorted automatically and
electronically, only. Other contacts will be ignored. Abstracts sent to
both: philip.tew_at_northampton.ac.uk and barfies_at_westminster.ac.uk.

Emergency contact: Professor Philip Tew 07956 951930 / 01604 892616

Abstract deadline: Monday 5th September, 2005. Early notification of
acceptance may be requested if required for international speakers.

Fees: prior to Friday 30th September, 2005: =A340 (FORTY POUNDS STERLING) full
cost; =A320 (TWENTY POUNDS STERLING) students and unwaged. Subsequently =A355
(FIFTY-FIVE POUNDS STERLING) full cost; =A330 (THIRTY POUNDS STERLING)
students and unwaged. Send cheques (sterling only) or international money
orders of equivalent amount payable to =91THE LONDON NETWORK FOR MODERN
FICTION STUDIES,=92 and addressed to Professor Philip Tew, Director, UK
Network for Modern Fiction Studies, Avenue Campus, University College
Northampton, Avenue Campus, St. Georges Avenue, Northampton
Northamptonshire, NN2 6JD

Contacts and Coordinators: Professor Philip Tew (University of Northampton)
and Steven Barfield (University of Westminster)

Venue: Avenue Campus, University College Northampton, Avenue Campus, St.
Georges Avenue, Northampton Northamptonshire, NN2 6JD; Tel: 01604 735500.
Website: http://www.northampton.ac.uk/

UK Network for Modern Fiction Studies website:
http://www.uk-fiction-network.org/

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Received on Fri Jun 03 2005 - 09:58:40 EDT