Tag: translation

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ENSFR Annual Conference — Lisbon October 2022: Short Fiction as World Literature

In Death of a Discipline, Gayatri Spivak mentions the problematic identification of “literature” with the novel form in comparative literature (2005: 123). Her concern with our general blindness to non-hegemonic forms recalls the consternation frequently shown in short fiction criticism toward the enduring novel-centrism of literary studies. This conference aims to bring together scholars with an interest in examining this tension and the different ways in which it may extend to the field of world literature. But our goal is not to look at the short form once again in stark opposition to the novel. Rather, we invite papers that interrogate the marginal spaces of short fiction from other angles and explore the underestimated potential of the short story as a cosmopolitan form, focusing on how it may tell an alternative history of literary circulation.

While brevity may well be an insufficient criterion to define the genre, it is, in the simplest sense, what makes the short story highly portable and translatable. With its ability to easily navigate distinct narrative registers, subgenres, styles, and literary traditions, the short story’s inherently movable nature is reflected in the rapidity and abundance of its publication. It often circulates in both literary and non-specialized sources that are more volatile and transmissible than books: journals, pamphlets, academic and cultural periodicals, and, increasingly, digital outlets such as websites, blogs, online magazines, and social media. It is also typically faster to translate than longer forms like the novel, as well as arguably easier to translate than more semantically and structurally complex forms like poetry. The short story is widely translated and disseminated in anthologies that frequently aim to introduce their readers to lesser-known or previously untranslated works. Additionally, the short story is the object of frequent adaptations to cinema, television and other audiovisual media.

But the short story also travels through language(s) by other means. On one hand, it is a migrant or a traveling form even within its linguistic and geo-cultural world, often appearing in collections that promote the categories of Lusophone, Anglophone, or Francophone short story. On the other hand, its portability also means that short-story writers are often influenced by, and respond to, international peers and predecessors. In this sense, the modernist short story is an apt example of an intrinsically transnational genre in which the influences of Chekhov, Kafka, Mansfield, Borges, and others, cut across national boundaries. Looking into post-modern and contemporary fiction we also have to consider emerging and renewed forms of migrant writing, with an increasing number of multilingual authors writing in a second language and sometimes acting also as translators of their own work.

Considering the diversity that characterizes the many genres of short fiction, the topics we hope to explore in the ENSFR Conference of 2022 through the theme of “Short Fiction as World Literature” include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The short story in motion: translation, adaptation, circulation

• The history of short fiction in connection to literary and social change •

• The short story as a portable form •

• Intermedial and transmedial approaches to short fiction

• Intertextuality and the short story

• The short story as a global and a local form

• Migration and the short story

• Reception theory and the reader’s response to short fiction

• Transnational styles and genres (e.g. novella, flash fiction, short story cycles)

• Multilingualism in short fiction and cross-cultural aesthetics

• The native, foreign, hegemonic, and peripheral languages of the short story

• Short fiction anthologies in world literature

• Creation and the short story: creative nonfiction, crossover fiction, multimedia storytelling.

Proposals of about 300 words for presentations in English, Portuguese, or French, together with a short biographical note (50 words) should be sent to ensfrconference2022@gmail.com by June 3.

We welcome interdisciplinary and creative presentations. Proposals from students and early-career researchers are especially encouraged. A selection of articles based on papers from the conference will be published in Short Fiction in Theory and Practice and in Journal of the Short Story in English.

The 2022 ENSFR Conference will take place in-person at the University of Lisbon School of Arts and Humanities (Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa).

Organizers: Ailsa Cox (Edge Hill University) Amândio Reis (Universidade de Lisboa) Elke D’hoker (KU Leuven) Michelle Ryan-Sautour (Université d’Angers)

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Adaptation Conference, Lille 2016: Call for Papers

Adaptation, Revision, Translation: From Life to Art, from the Page to Stage and Screen

June 17-18, 2016 at Lille Catholic University

Reflecting upon the new edition of her Theory of Adaptation published in 2013, Linda Hutcheon feels that the first version of her study only looked at adaptation “in terms of repetition with variation.” She now sees “new forms and platforms” and wonders “where to draw the line at what we call an adaptation?” In an endeavour to fuel the body of work already available on adaptation theory, this conference means to explore a variety of avenues. Contributors are welcome to work on textual manipulations: short stories being turned into novels, the use of myth, legends and of the epic tradition in children’s books or “original rewritings” such as Michael Cunningham’s The Hours (1998).

History or real crime finding their way into fiction or film also have their place here, whether in detective fiction classics like F. Tennyson Jesse’s A Pin to See the Peepshow (1934) or glamorous historical bestsellers like Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl (2001). As Linda Seger points out, “adaptation is a transition, a conversion, from one medium to another. All original material will put up a fight, as if it were saying ‘take me as I am’.” How novelists and screenwriters resist that temptation and engage in the necessary reconceptualising in order to create a storyline and a work of art is an essential part of our subject.

It will also be interesting to reflect, in a more traditional way, on adaptations of fiction into film and, in a less conventional way, on fiction that derives from film. We shall thus see in what ways Kamilla Elliott’s comments in Rethinking the Novel/Film Debate can be taken further for, according to her, “if art draws from real life, then an art adapting another art is one step further away from real life as a representation of a representation.” Other points of entry would be to dive into the relationship between plays and musicals (My Fair Lady being the classic example of the genre) or from a story or event to painting, sculpture or graphic art. As Hutcheon’s study suggests, adaptation is interactive in that it enables “the knowing audience” to envisage “adaptation as adaptation.” The remakes of famous films – re-adaptations – such as The Great Gatsby could lead to discussions on revision as a means of introducing the young public to classics. Other forms of adaptation such as fan fiction or new translations of famous works could also be taken into consideration. The word “adaptation” will thus be understood in a broad sense, making interdisciplinary approaches possible.

Abstracts of about 500 words should be sent to Suzanne Bray (suzanne.bray@univ-catholille.fr) and Gérald Préher (gerald.preher@univ-catholille.fr) before January 15, 2016 along with a short biographical note.

Academic panel: Suzanne Bray (Lille Catholic University), Cindy Hamilton (Liverpool Hope University), Jacqui Miller (Liverpool Hope University), Gérald Préher (Lille Catholic University)