Narrative Concepts in the Study of Eighteenth-Century Literature

Narrative Concepts in the Study of Eighteenth-Century Literature

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Colloquium at the University of Turku, 18 -19 January 2013
Lecture Hall Janus, Sirkkala Campus

The emphasis on the historical variability of literature has forced scholars to a reconsideration of the nature of the concepts of narrative study. The objective of the colloquium “Narrative Concepts in the Study of Eighteenth-Century Literature” is to reflect upon the origin and use of narrative concepts in the analysis of the narrative literature(s) of the eighteenth century. The colloquium offers a forum for reflection upon how the common concepts of narrative study - such as characterization, narrator, point of view/focalization, plot, story, time, place - are accommodated when used in the analysis of eighteenth-century literature. Are the concepts general, and is the historical specificity of a literary phenomenon grasped simply by choosing the right concepts from the repertoire of general, ahistorical concepts, or do the concepts themselves need to undergo essential modifications depending on the literary historical phenomenon, or even be created on the basis of observing the specific features of the phenomenon?

The colloquium is organized by Finnish Academy project Literature and Time and Turku Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies.

Friday 18 January

9.00 Welcome: Liisa Steinby

9.15 Michael McKeon (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey): The Eighteenth-Century Challenge to Narrative Theory

10.30 Coffee

11.00 - 12.45

John Richetti(University of Pennsylvania): Formalism and Historicity Reconciled in the Novel: The Function of Minor Characters in Tom Jones

Claudia Nitschke(Durham University): Metalepsis and Fictionality in the 18th Century

Pat Rogers (University of South Florida): The Uses of Paratext in Popular Eighteenth-Century Biography: The Case of Edmund Curll

12.45 Lunch

14.00 - 15.10

DorotheeBirke(University of Freiburg): Authority and the ‘Authorial Narrator’ in the Eighteenth-Century English Novel

RosamariaLoretelli(University of Naples): Silent Reading, the Advent of the Novel and the Narratological Category of Retardation

15.10 Coffee

15.30 - 16.45 Monika Fludernik(University of Freiburg): Space in the Eighteenth-Century Novel: Plotting Spatiality and Description

Saturday 19 January

9.15 - 10.30

Stuart Sherman (Fordham University): The Play of Pulse and Sprawl: Rhythms of Reading in the Newspaper and the Novel

Kathrin Pöge-Alder (University of Jena): The Grimm-Tale and the Long Lasting Eighteenth-Century Literature

10.30 Coffee

11.00 Paul J. Hunter (University of Chicago): “Having no more Ink…” Robinson Crusoe and the Problem of Inadequate Narrative Models

12.15 Lunch

13.30 - 15.15

Karin Kukkonen (University of Oxford): Probability in Charlotte Lennox’ The Female Quixote

Christine Waldschmidt(University of Mainz): The Rhetoric Value of Narrative Plot: Example as a Narrative Structure in Enlightenment Literature

Penny Pritchard (University of Hertfordshire): ‘Speaking Well of the Dead’: Characterisation and Typology in Eighteenth-Century English Funeral Sermons

15.15 Coffee

15.45 - 17.00

Liisa Steinby (University of Turku): Perception and Time: Forms of Empiricism in the Eighteenth-Century Novel

Aino Mäkikalli (University of Turku): Time as a Narrative Concept in Early Eighteenth-Century Novels

17.00 Concludingdiscussion