The new issue of the peer-reviewed journal Short Fiction in Theory and Practice is devoted to the short story cycle. In the editorial, Elke D’hoker gives a critical overview of different conceptualisations of the short story cycle in different literary traditions. Articles by Raphaël Ingelbien, Jennifer Smith, Rob Luscher, Ailsa Cox, Rachel Lister and An Van Hecke offer original analyses of short story cycles by such writers as LeFanu, Hemmingway, Steinbeck, Byatt, Simpson and many others. The issue also contains an interview with Rachel Cusk, who offers interesting reflections on the short story. For the publisher’s link to the journal, click here.
Special issue on the short story collection
Interférences Littéraires / Literaire Interferenties: A Multilingual e-Journal of Literary Studies has just published a special issue on the short story collection. It is entitled “Cycles, Recueils, Macrotexts: The Short Story Collection in Theory and Practice” and is edited by Elke D’hoker and Bart Van den Bossche. It contains articles in English and French and is available on the journal’s website.
Short Fiction in Theory and Practice 3:1
The latest volume of the peer-reviewed journal includes a selection of articles on narration in the short story from the conference ‘The Singer, Not the Song’ , including articles on Annie Proulx, Primo Levi, Can Xue and Scottish crime writers, plus more on Janette Turner Hospital and a practice-based essay by Graham Mort. More on http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals../view-issue,id=2544/
Katherine Mansfield and France
Katherine Mansfield
and France
International conference organised by the Université Paris III
—Sorbonne Nouvelle (EA 4398 PRISMES)
in conjunction with the Katherine Mansfield Society
19–21 June 2014
Guest speakers will be:
C. K. Stead, Sydney Janet Kaplan and Gerri Kimber
2014 seems the ideal year to celebrate Katherine Mansfield’s lifelong attachment to France and her passionate involvement with all things French: not just the language, literature and the arts, but the everyday world too, from recipes and customs to the contemporary socio-political context, transport, economics and of course the devastating impact of the war. France for Mansfield was a land of transit, a haven to escape to and a place of exile; it was an adopted home and a sad reminder of how far away those she loved were; life the other side of the Channel was sometimes a source of wonder and inspiration, at others the trigger for comic irony and bitter satire.
Mansfield’s biographers have minutely charted out her constant channel crossings in the years 1914–1923. Her letters, notebooks and stories all point to the different repercussions of France and French culture on her vivid imagination. Recent critical studies have explored both the story of Mansfield’s reception in France and the various influences French arts had on her own creative output. But the time now seems ripe to bring together scholars, researchers and students to try and piece together an overall picture of Mansfield in France and ‘une Mansfield française’.
Suggested topics for papers might include:
Mansfield and French arts and literature: her reception in France; Mansfield as reader, critic and reviewer of French arts in Great Britain; her influence on contemporary and later French authors; translations and the publication history of her works in French.
The French influence on Mansfield: French language and culture in her education and apprenticeship years; France as a setting for her stories; French life recorded in the journals in early story sketches; her readings of key French authors and their influence on her works; French aestheticism, fin-de-siècle and early-twentieth-century philosophy.
Mansfield and French life and society: as journalist and eye-witness of war-torn France; a satirist of local habits and customs; a bemused observer of expatriate and émigré life; Paris and the French Riviera as the specific locations that have become so much associated with her work, but also French geographies of displacement, both real and affective.
Mansfield, the polyglot, cultural ambassador and cosmopolitan: France as a step outside Englishness; forms of cultural otherness, alienation and renewal through the meeting and mixing of identities; language as empowerment and disempowerment; nationalism versus the political repercussions of border crossing; bilingualism; redefining the self as other; Mansfield the European.
Mansfield and Frenchness as a means of thinking between: cross-dressing, roleplay, borrowed identities, impersonation; travesty, but also Frenchness itself seen from within and without, from the privileged outsider’s point of view, the ‘devenir français’ from Mansfield’s perspective.
Biographical, linguistic, literary, sociological, political comparative . . . all approaches are welcome in this endeavour to embrace Katherine Mansfield’s French life. Our exploration of the various French avenues in her life, works and afterlife will take place in the heart of Paris, and time out will be programmed into the conference to enable all those who attend to obtain a very literal sense of place and setting. Possible Mansfield-inspired walks within Paris itself and additional excursions to the immediate environs will be suggested later.
The three-day conference will also include an alternative, intercultural approach to Mansfield’s French life in the form of a cello recital given by London-based cellist Joseph Spooner and New Zealand pianist Kathryn Mosley with a programme of early twentieth century French music and works by Arnold Trowell.
Please submit abstracts of 250 words plus a bio-sketch of 50 words to the conference organisers kminparis@gmail.com
Deadline for abstracts: December 31st 2013
Organisers:
Claire Davison, Caroline Pollentier, Anne Mounic, Anne Besnault-Levita
Conference: The Short Story and Short Story Collection in the Modernist Period: Between Theory and Practice.
Academia Belgica (Rome) * 12-14 September 2013
Universiteit Gent – Katholieke Universiteit Leuven – Università di Perugia
Keynote speakers: Adrian Hunter (University of Stirling), Christine Reynier (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3), Raffaele Donnarumma (Università di Pisa)
The modernist period (1900-1940) is a time when the short story came into its own as an intricate, flexible and highly respected literary genre. Across Europe, writers experimented with the form in ways which have come to shape the short story until the present day. Within the changing publication contexts of the time, moreover, writers also devised new approaches to publish short stories together within a collection, sequence or cycle. In the first half of the twentieth century, finally, several writers and critics also sought to define the short story as a genre and to distinguish its characteristics from both earlier forms of shorter prose and from the novel.
This conference hopes to address all these different guises, debates and contexts of the short story in the modernist period, across different countries and literary traditions. Its primary aim is to reflect on the modern short story and short story collection from a theoretical perspective, but it also seeks to contextualise this theoretical approach through a number of case studies from different literary traditions. By bringing together scholars from these different traditions, the conference also aims to trace cross-references, intertextual links or general influences in a broader comparative perspective.
The conference is organised by the departments of literary studies of the universities of Ghent, Leuven and Perugia. It will take place in the Academia Belgica in Rome.
The program can found at the following link:
http://www.shortstoryandmodernism.ugent.be/programme