Call for papers

‘Perfectly phrased and quite as true’: Aphoristic Modernity, 1890–1950

We hold this truth to be self-evident: the conference will take place on the 4th of July 2015, at King’s Manor, University of York

Plenary speakers:
Dr Mark Sandy, Durham University
Dr James Williams, University of York

‘You cut life to pieces with your epigrams’, says Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray to Lord Henry. His statement is itself an adept epigram, encapsulating a particular kind of aphoristic writing which is pointed and authoritative, yet retains a hint of frivolity. Although aphoristic and epigrammatic writing hails from antiquity and has always been a diverse and popular literary genre, the final years of the Victorian era saw a surge in the popularity of the aphorism. As the rhythms of life and industry accelerated, along with the consumption of information, aesthetic fashions followed suit, and the aphorism came to encapsulate the condensation, spontaneity and fragmentation of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century modernity. As Henry James’ epigrammatic assessment of the Victorian novel implied, ‘loose, baggy monsters’ were out, economy of language was in, and the art of aphorism was revivified.

Along with its subgenera, such as the epigram, the witticism, and the apophthegm, the aphorism expresses the kernel of a truth in surprising ways, while playfully destabilising it – a duality embodied by Friedrich Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human (1878), one of the first modern works to undermine the systematised nature of western philosophical thought by employing aphoristic writing. On a more quotidian level, with advances in modern media drawing the cult of celebrity into the literary world, modern and modernist writers became celebrated for their bon mots. Accordingly, the nimble one-liner popularised by Wilde and Mark Twain was taken up and turned to different purposes by later public figures such as G.K. Chesterton, Winston Churchill, T.S. Eliot, and Dorothy Parker. As this diverse company suggests, the aphorism can assume as many styles and modes as possible themes, while its airtight economy squeezes and condenses meaning rather than whittling it. Like a quaint contraption ingrained with cryptic clues that slowly spool out meaning, the modern aphorism is ‘neither a truism on the one hand, nor a riddle on the other’, as the late-Victorian journalist, John Morley put it.

This one-day conference aims not only to showcase the distinctive character of aphoristic writing in modernity, but also to rehabilitate the critical status of this miniaturised, ephemeral literary genre. We invite 20 minute papers and panel proposals on any of the following variations upon this theme (although respondents should not consider themselves restricted to these topics):

·         Aphoristic subgenres (epigram, apophthegm, maxim, proverb, sententia, etc.)
·         Aphorisms and politics
·         Celebrity and sound-bites
·         Paradox and/or self-contradiction
·         Technical ingenuity and/or innovation of thought
·         Aphorisms and modernism
·         Aphorisms and decadence
·         The stylistics of aphorisms
·         Witticisms and quips
·         Earnestness and irony
·         Quibbling and wordplay
·         Management of meaning: ambiguity, multiplicity, denseness
·         fel vs mel epigrams
·         The practice of quotation
·         Epigraphs, dedications and other paratextual fragments
·         Aphorisms implanted within larger texts
·         Aphorisms and literary theory
·         Modern aphoristic writing as influenced by antiquity and the Renaissance
·         Anti-aphorisms: platitudes and commonplaces
·         Anti-aphorisms: parody and nonsense aphorisms
·         Conversational and anecdotal aphorisms

Panels will follow the format of three 20-minute papers followed by questions. Abstracts of no more than 250 words are invited by 1st April 2015. Please email submissions to aphoristicmodernity@gmail.com

Writing Literary History: Europe 1900-1950

14-16 September 2015, University of Leuven

This conference is an initiative of the MDRN research lab at the University of Leuven (www.mdrn.be), which focuses on European literature from the (long) first half of the twentieth century. Recognizing that (modern) literary history is currently one of the main sites of theoretical and methodological reflection in literary studies, the conference aims to take stock of recent scholarship and to investigate how literary historical research has modified our understanding of writing between 1900 and 1950. We welcome proposals for papers which consider the following overall research questions and perspectives:

• Many crucial notions in literary studies have been revalued in recent years in the practice of literary history. These include archive, period, book, event, media, genre, generation, objects, style and the senses. How exactly has this conceptual revaluation affected our view of literature’s and writers’ complex dynamics and functions between 1900 and 1950? What aspects and notions of writing require further attention in future literary histories?

• Recent decades have seen an explosion of new or revised approaches in literary history. These include digital humanities, media archaeology, cognitive approaches, evocriticism and literary Darwinism, ecocriticism, object-oriented theories, affect theory and many more. Which of these are of special value to the history of literature from the modernist period and why?

• Our understanding of literature’s ‘context’ has gone through drastic changes in the past decades. Once universally understood as the immediate institutional, economic or political constellation surrounding a text, ‘context’ in present-day literary studies means a lot of things, from the ‘brain’ (in cognitive studies) to the ‘universe’ (in so-called Big History). How can these drastic redefinitions help us to reconceive the history of literature between 1900 and 1950?
• Place and space always have been said to be of significance to the historical development of European literature. What new approaches to space and place (from translation studies and memory studies to post-socialist research and geologically inspired methods working with concepts like deep time) allow us to reread the regional, national and transnational circulation of European writing during this half century?

• Which new forms of reading to have gained weight in recent years (from distant reading and uncritical reading to non-reading and beyond) are of relevance to the historiography of literature from the modernist period? Similarly, what new or hitherto neglected aspects of the materiality, reception and production of texts can help us to cast new light on the writing in the period?

• The first half of the twentieth-century saw the rise of many historiographical methods (from Formalism and early structuralism to neo-Marxism and early Critical Theory) that went on to play a crucial role in literary history. What aspects of these methods still hold potential today? Are there perhaps other approaches in literary history developed during the period have remained largely neglected but still hold promise?

Proposals for 20-minute presentations are welcome before 4 May 2015 and can be sent to: mdrn.wlh@gmail.com. Case-based contributions that can help us to revisit the writings from the modernist period will be considered, but our principal aim is to foster methodological and conceptual debate and to enhance the dialogue between the major literary and historiographical research traditions within Europe and beyond. For that reason proposals on general theoretical and methodological topics in the field of literary historiography (always with an emphasis on the period 1900-1950) will be favored. A selection of papers will be published after the conference.

For more information, visit www.mdrn.be.

CFP: Elizabeth Bishop’s Questions of Travel (Sheffield University, 25-27 June 2015). http://elizabethbishopat50.wordpress.com  Deadline: 15 December.