Announce

Music Department, King’s College London 24–25 October 2020

Keynote speakers:

Prof. Kate van Orden (Harvard University) Prof. Julia Prest (University of St Andrews)

The last few decades have seen a marked increase in early modern festival research. From royal coronations and ceremonial entries to court ballets and investitures of popes and cardinals, such events were important expressions of courtly, civic, and ecclesiastical hierarchy, community, and tradition. Between 1500 and 1800, France was one of the most prolific and influential centers of festival art in Europe. Indeed, French ‘inventions’ such as the court ballet (ballet de cour), the equestrian carousel, and the comédie-ballet were imitated and emulated across the continent.

However, research on French festival culture has typically focused on traditional centers of power like the royal court, and has either highlighted the contributions of well-known poets, painters, and dance masters or concentrated on the responses of elite spectators like foreign diplomats, princes, and nobles. Our conference instead seeks to shift the focus towards marginalised voices and figures, among them:

Lesser-known musicians, choreographers, poets, and artists who have been overlooked in conventional histories of music, literature, and the arts, namely because they do not conform to narratives of great composers/musicians, poets, and artists, despite being critical to the production and performance of French festivals.

Non-elite people, such as artisans and merchants, who were crucial to the production of festivals, or members from the urban population, who were regularly part of audiences for civic festivities in France, such as ceremonial entries and equestrian carousels.

‘Subaltern’ people, among them women, ethnic and confessional minorities, queer audiences, and colonial populations, who were often involved in the production and performance of French festivals or attended them in person. 

Our conference is interested in both what French festival culture during the period 1500–1800 reveals about these figures, and what this investigation tells us about early modern society on a more global level. What insights does the non-elite or subaltern status of festival contributors offer into early modern perceptions of the arts? What do French festivals tell us about other groups who were generally excluded or oppressed in society? How should we understand the frequent tension between emphasising and erasing the foreign ‘other’ (like the participation of colonial subjects, the use of blackface for racial stereotyping, or the cultural appropriation of valuable colonial objects, etc.)?

Paper proposals

The organisers are keen to encourage an interdisciplinary approach to this subject matter, assembling a balance of musicologists, historians, and scholars in other fields to create a forum for productive exchange. We particularly welcome applications from under-represented groups in academia, such as women, BAME, and LGBTQ+ communities.

We would be interested in any papers that address the following topics:

Investigations of musicians, artists, choreographers, poets, and other festival contributors who have been marginalised in conventional histories of early modern arts.

Analysis of individual festivals, theatrical performances, or ceremonies that involved and/or represented marginalised voices and figures.

Diachronic studies on the involvement and/or representation of marginalised voices and figures.

Research on cultural and diplomatic exchanges between traditional centres of power and commonly marginalised communities, such as colonial populations and confessional minorities. This may include transnational and global approaches to French festival culture.

If you would like to propose a 20-minute paper, please send a brief abstract of about 250 words to marginalisedvoicesconf@gmail.com. When sending your abstract, please also provide a one-page CV with details of your academic experience, affiliation, and publications. The deadline for submitting proposals is Monday 31 August 2020. The committee will make their final decision on submitted abstracts by mid-September 2020. Further information about the programme, registration, travel and accommodation will be announced after that date. The organisers are thinking of inviting conference delegates to prepare a chapter for an edited volume of papers presented at this event.  

Our twitter handle is @marginalisedvo1.

Organisers: Marc W. S. Jaffré (University of Oxford), Bram van Leuveren (University of St Andrews), and Alexander Robinson (King’s College London).

This event is generously supported by the Royal Musical Association and The Society for the Study of French History.

Please note: depending on how the current Covid-19 situation unfolds, this conference may ultimately be scheduled online (e.g. via Microsoft Teams).

May 6–8, 2021 • Notre Dame's London Global Gateway

Is the foreigner friend or foe? The rhetoric around immigration has become ever more heated as globalization, climate change, pandemics, civil wars and proxy wars, the ease of travel, and cross-cultural exchange and encounter have rapidly increased. In the transition from the medieval to the early modern period, a similar intensity in such activity within Europe and outside its borders dominated everything from literature to politics to religion.

A nascent xenophobia makes itself known in disputes between different peoples, of course, but also between members of the same culture. In France, for example, Protestants were often considered a foreign element to be excised. On the other hand, foreigners often fascinated the natives or served as a political tool of comparison in their attempts to affirm or purify their own culture. Either way, representations of and interactions with the foreigner could reveal ambiguity with respect to the newcomer but also within one’s own culture. The stranger could quickly become one’s neighbor, if the conditions were right. This complicates medieval and early modern xenophobia, as fears can be assuaged if certain advantages present themselves.

This interdisciplinary conference, with a special focus on the domains of literature, religion, theology, politics, and history and their intersections, seeks to explore the reality of xenophobia and what role it played in medieval and early modern societies. Do outsiders offer an opportunity for charity or even enlightenment? Are they insidious agents of a foreign power or reinforcements called in to strengthen a purportedly supranational religious identity? Are they rapacious barbarians or civilized partners of trade? This is more than a question of the “Other”; it is about exploring the ambiguities of migration and cross-cultural exchange in the culture and in daily life in a period of religious, political, and cultural upheaval within Europe and beyond.

Paper topics will be especially welcome in the following areas:

Immigration inside and outside Europe

Protestant and Catholic migrations

The virtue of charity

Religion and poverty

Duty and practice of hospitality

Literary representations of the foreigner

Travel narratives

Rhetoric, polemic, and satire

Medieval and early modern theology

Historiography of the stranger

International politics and diplomacy

Spread of disease and treating the sick

Keynote Speakers:

George Hoffmann is a professor of French at the University of Michigan, where he specializes in the literature, history, and culture of sixteenth-century France, with a special focus, among others, on religious studies and the history of the Reformation. He received his M.Phil. from the Université d’Aix Marseille before completing his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 1990. Reforming French Culture (2017), his most recent book, argues that religious satire not only fostered the crucial reformed experience of spiritual alienation but that this experience informed the trajectory of French culture more broadly, descending to today’s republican universalism and laïcité.

Anthony Pagden is distinguished professor of political science at UCLA. His research has concentrated on the relationship, cultural, political and legal, between the peoples of Europe and its overseas settlements and those of the non-European world from the Atlantic to the Pacific. His main concern is in the political theory of empire, in how the West sought to explain to itself how and why it had come to dominate so much of the world, and in the present consequences of the erosion of that domination. He has also written widely about cosmopolitanism, nationalism, internationalism and about the history and the future of the European Union. He is the author of more than a dozen books, many of which have been translated into a number of European and Asian languages. His most recent publications include The Enlightenment – and why it still matters (Random House and Oxford University Press) in 2013, and in 2015, The Burdens of Empire: 1539 to the Present (Cambridge University Press).

All lodging expenses for paper presenters will be reimbursed. Some meals provided. Please send an abstract no longer than 200 words and an abbreviated CV to strangers@nd.edu before July 1, 2020. Decisions will be released on or before September 15, 2020. Proposals by advanced graduate students will be considered.

http://sites.nd.edu/strangers-and-neighbors-conference/

Women in French

2020 Midwest Modern Language Association Convention

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

November 5-8, 2020

Call for Papers for WIF at the 2020 MMLA Convention (November 5-8 in Milwaukee, WI). This year’s theme is “Cultures of Collectivity.”

Please send a 250-word abstract in French or English along with your academic affiliation, brief bio, and A/V requirements to Jennifer Howell, Illinois State University, jthowel@ilstu.edu by May 31, 2020.

Proposals for complete panels are also welcome.

Notifications will be sent by June 10, 2020. All presenters must be current members of both the Midwest Modern Language Association and Women in French in order to participate.

Additional information can be found on the conference website:

https://www.luc.edu/mmla/convention/

All those interested in Women in French are encouraged to attend.

"I will also organize a dinner out for all WIF panelists and WIF members who would like to join us. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions. We look forward to seeing you in Milwaukee!" — Jennifer Howell.

Ouvrage collectif

On a trop longtemps associé le voyage (réel ou fictionnel) à ses effets bénéfiques. Ainsi, il permettrait le décentrement, la découverte de l’Autre, la mise en perspective des cultures et religions : Homère, Apulée, Montaigne, Voltaire ou l’abbé Barthélémy ont fait école. Certains voyagent pour se soigner (Montaigne), pour retrouver le calme, voire l’inspiration, d’autres pour remonter aux sources culturelles. Mais, par exemple, avant ou derrière le Grand Tour (en lui-même moralement scandaleux, cf. Gilles Bertrand, Le Grand Tour revisité), n’y a‑t‑il pas déjà parfois l’ombre d’un scandale familial, ou au contraire le désir du scandale ? Ainsi, Flaubert et Maxime Du Camp, qui n’en sont pas à leurs premières frasques, embarquant pour l’Orient, espèrent bien se livrer à des facéties exotiques tout bonnement scandaleuses… Et si nous changions notre façon de voir, et envisagions le voyage sous l’angle du choc (cette surprise indignée devant une personne ou une œuvre non conformiste), choc individuel ou collectif, double syndrome de l’Inde et de Florence ? Ou encore si nous envisagions le voyage comme la découverte de ce qui semble incompréhensible, dérange profondément, que l’écrivain tente tout de même de saisir ?

Empruntons pour une fois les chemins scabreux (Dominique Bertrand parle d’« écriture traversière »), difficilement accessibles, jalonnés de difficultés qui incitent à trébucher, sur le chemin de la foi, de la morale et de la raison, des convenances et de l’éducation, et voyons comment le voyage met l’individu hors de lui, révèle une part innommable : il se sent libéré de ses chaînes et est tenté par le plongeon dans l’Inconnu, le grand mal. Quels sont ces écrivains-voyageurs qui créent autour d’eux une aura sulfureuse, dont la renommée les précède en faisant frissonner le public d’incompréhension, d’inquiétude ou de réprobation ? Quels sont ceux qui, grâce au scandale de leurs écrits ou de leurs actes ont permis la transformation d’un monde figé, ou au contraire, sont restés scandaleusement incompris ? Que rapportent ceux qui se font les échotiers des chroniques de cours étrangères scandaleuses ? Pensons aussi aux retours des enfants prodigues et les questions que soulèvent de telles expériences. Dans le récit scandaleux, y a-t-il intégration ou perpétuation de la différence ?

Les libertins, Don Juan et Casanova en tête, voyagent et séduisent, dans l’accumulation des conquêtes et des souffrances, comme preuves insatiables de l’existence, au grand dam de la Morale, mais aussi des bonheurs individuels. Sade fait deux voyages en Italie (et deux récits) avant de produire cette œuvre scandaleuse qu’est Juliette : le scandale est-il dans une civilisation italienne décadente ou dans l’expansion incontrôlée des instincts naturels ? L’Italie est bien « le territoire du désir anglo-saxon » (Yves Clavaron). Mais en France, des intellectuels du début du siècle (Gide, Montherlant…) profitent de l’« exotisme » du Maghreb pour assouvir leurs penchants sexuels réprimés en Europe sans que personne ne se récrie : la chaleur, la couleur exotiques recouvrent pudiquement les scandales viatiques. Un peu avant, Freud voyageait en Italie pour tenter de définir cet indicible scandaleux qu’est l’inconscient… Gauguin fatigué raconte dans Noa Noa comment il découvre Tahiti, y prend femme de treize ans et revit. Jean-Jacques Bouchard visite l’Italie en hérétique et homosexuel et laisse dans ses Confessions un « amas de raffinements d'obscénités ». James Joyce dans Ulysses fait, lui, scandale en 1922 avec une journée de l’errance sexuelle d’un homme chaste attendant sa Pénélope. Les figures mythiques et les parodies mythologiques sont convoquées pour dire le scandale de la guerre chez Claude Simon, par la puissance écrasante de la matière, son autonomie, sa putréfaction (La Route des Flandres, L’Acacia). Mais avec Céline, la farce, l’humour s’invitent dans le Voyage pour dénoncer la folie humaine (voyages sur L’Amiral Bragueton, L’Infanta Combitta et le San Tapeta – tout un programme sexuel), ou le scandale de l’injustice permanente dans Mort à crédit (exemple des torgnoles et du tricar, ou du voyage en Angleterre), scènes qui écœurent et font rire tout à la fois. Sur un mode plus poétique, Jules Romains (Les Copains) raconte, au cours d’un voyage à bicyclette, la scandaleuse atteinte aux bonnes mœurs organisée par une bande d’amis dans deux malheureuses sous-préfectures du Puy-de-Dôme. Plus récemment, Michel Houellebecq alimente la chronique des scandales médiatiques d’œuvres désenchantées, comme Lanzarote et Plateforme, par le traitement de sujets scandaleux (la pédophilie, le tourisme sexuel) ainsi que par la confusion de sa posture d’écrivain qui n’est d’ailleurs pas sans rappeler celle de Céline...

Empan :

Les contributions en langue française porteront en priorité sur des textes d’écrivains voyageurs du XVIe siècle au XXIe siècle.

Les études portant sur des textes viatiques de fiction sont aussi bienvenues.

Les contributions pourront porter sur différents axes :

1. Scandales historiques et biographiques. Quels sont ces écrivains-voyageurs qui sont sujets de scandale ou qui révèlent un scandale, mais aussi qui font ou publient des récits des scandales liés à leur voyage (chroniques de cour…) ?

2. Scandale et littérature de voyage. Le rapport direct du voyage au scandale. Comment le voyage permet-il la libération scandaleuse, comme celle de l’eros peregrinus ? Ou quelle est au contraire la position du voyageur qui juge la scène estrange scandaleuse ?

3. Scandale, stylistique et psychocritique. Quel traitement subit la scène scandaleuse dans la littérature viatique (viol, cannibalisme…), et de quelle manière l’écrivain modifie-t-il (ou non) ses propres codes de bienséance – horresco referens – pour raconter ? L’écriture viatique impose‑t‑elle une mise en scène à la crudité première du scandaleux et fabrique-t-elle le scandale ?

4. Scandale et mélange des genres. Le scandale peut-il être comique ? L’humour noir est-il de mise dans la littérature de voyage ? Quel(s) genre(s) et quel(s) ton(s) ressorti(ssen)t au scandale ? De nombreux sous-genres intègrent le voyage dans leur dynamique interne, comme pour une part de la littérature érotique. L’on pourra aussi considérer l’étude des voyages temporels qui, en déplaçant le scandale d’une époque à une autre, le rendent dicible.

5. Scandale et modernité. Quelle est la portée du scandale et de la transgression dans un monde où, comme le constatait Lévi-Strauss dans Tristes Tropiques, l’ici et l’ailleurs sont identiques ? « Ce que d’abord vous nous montrez, voyages, c’est notre ordure lancée au visage de l’humanité. » D’ailleurs, le voyage n’est-il pas lui-même devenu scandaleux, s’il est polluant, voire spéciste ? De ce fait, outre le dimension anthropocène, la prise en charge éthique du discours anti-voyage scandaleux trouve aussi sa place (« Quelques-uns achèvent de se corrompre par de longs voyages », La Bruyère).

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La proposition argumentée ne devra pas dépasser 3 500 signes (espaces comprises) et précisera dans quel(s) axe(s) elle souhaite s’insérer. Elle sera suivie d’une courte bio-bibliographie.

Les argumentaires sont à envoyer avant le 31 juillet 2020 à : voyagescandale-patrick@yahoo.com

La publication sera portée par le Centre de Recherche de Littérature de Voyage (CRLV) et le Centre Interdisciplinaires Études Littéraires Aix-Marseille (CIELAM), et éditée par les Éditions Classiques Garnier.

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Comité scientifique :

Jean-Christophe ABRAMOVICI (PR, Paris-Sorbonne CELLF).

Gaëtan BRULOTTE (PR, Chaire des Sciences humaines, Université de Louisiane à Lafayette, romancier).

Belinda CANNONE (MCF, essayiste, romancière, LASLAR, Caen).

Jean-Claude LABORIE (MCF HDR, Nanterre)

Patrick MATHIEU (MCF, CIELAM, Aix-Marseille) Dir.

Linda RASOAMANANA (MCF, CEREdI, Rouen).

Sylvie REQUEMORA (PR, CIELAM, Aix-Marseille).

Fatima SADIQI, (PR, Centre ISIS et Université Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah de Fès, Maroc).

Frédéric TINGUELY (PR, Département de Français, Genève).

Editors: Angela Fabris, Albert Göschl, Steffen Schneider

Mediterranean studies flourish in literary and cultural studies, but if you look at the numerous publications on the subject, it is striking that the concepts of the Mediterranean and the theories and methods used in these are very disparate. Sometimes research focuses more on representations of the Mediterranean – landscape, history, cities – and sometimes more on the origins of authors or their cultural affiliations to the Mediterranean. Sometimes it is more a matter of overarching themes that are of current interest beyond the Mediterranean – migration, questions of inter- and transculturality, post-colonialism – and sometimes very specific aspects such as the Crusades or Mediterranean cities. Of course, we appreciate this fascinating diversity of important questions and topics; nevertheless, we believe that reflections on the foundations of this diverse research are essential to give a clear profile to Mediterranean literary studies. It is our conviction that this profile should be based upon the specific conditions and characteristics of (fictional) literature.

Particularly promising to us seems to be the access via the basic – perhaps least controversial – concept of the Mediterranean as a closely interwoven network of relationships between locally limited communities. Ever since the emergence of the modern concept of the Mediterranean, the idea of the connectedness of Mediterranean cultures has been at the heart of Mediterranean studies: this idea was already expressed by Michel Chevalier when he described the Mediterranean as a "lit nuptial entre l'Orient et l'Occident"; it manifested itself in the 20th century in the conviction of Mediterranean anthropologists that there are specific characteristics of the Mediterranean peoples and their ways of acting, and it underlies the whole magnificent tableau of Fernand Braudel’s opus magnum as well as Albert Camus' concept of the Southern thought ("La pensée du midi"). More recently, these notions of a Mediterranean unity and identity have come under criticism, which is not surprising given that they are the expression of a deeply colonial mentality. However, the critique has not led to an abandonment of the notion of connectedness, but rather to a reformulation under post-colonial and post-structural conditions: connectedness is now no longer conceived of as identity, but as a complex system of identities and differences, as a network linking entities of different size, power, history.

The most brilliant career has probably been that of a pair of terms introduced into Mediterranean research by Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell: connectivity and fragmentation.  Both terms are applied not only in historical scholarship but also in other scientific approaches such as research on geography or biodiversity. The relation between the terms can be seen as complementary as well as antithetical, depending on the interpretation and the research interest. While connectivity refers to the character of the coherence of a system and its resilience as a network, fragmentation points to the factor of diversity and differentiation. The density of the Mediterranean produces a cultural area that can be described by these two factors. The Mediterranean is not a simple geographical or historical unity, but a multiplicity, a network of highly interconnected elements, each of which is different and individual.

Connectivity and fragmentation, if understood as heuristic concepts, might also be useful for Mediterranean literary studies. Indeed, they make it possible to formulate theoretically the diversity of Mediterranean literatures and their potential links within and outside the Mediterranean. As Sharon Kinoshita, among others, has pointed out, it is precisely the connectivity of literary works – their historical, geographical, intertextual references –­ that makes it necessary for Mediterranean literary studies to transcend the boundaries of national philologies, but also the boundaries of individual languages (Kinoshita: Medieval Mediterranean Literature, PMLA 120.2, 2009, 600-608). This raises the disturbing question of whether the connectivity of Mediterranean literature can or should be limited in some way by constructing an inside and an outside of the Mediterranean. One of the most interesting questions is therefore the connection between global and Mediterranean literatures.

However, as obvious as the concepts of connectivity and fragmentation may be in historical studies, biology, etc., they cannot simply be applied to literature, because they refer to the real, material world; literary studies, on the other hand, are concerned with communicative processes, with signs and with mental reality. Although signs do refer to the world, it would reduce the potential of literary texts to understand them only as descriptions of or as statements about reality. Therefore, we encourage the contributors to ask what kind of connectivity and fragmentation literary texts produce, how they build and interrupt references (to the real world, to history, but also to other texts and discourses), how they create and deny communication, and how they take up and reflect literary and non-literary concepts of the Mediterranean.

From the editors' point of view, the following aspects appear to be particularly central – although we are of course open to further suggestions and approaches:

1. Critical analyses of the terms used to express Mediterranean unity and diversity (‘connectivity’ and ‘fragmentation,’ but also alternative and historical concepts)

2. Language: How are Mediterranean multilingualism, language contact situations, interference between languages realized in literature?

3. Form and genre: Are there specific forms of representing Mediterranean connectivity and fragmentation depending on literary genres? What is the role of literary form/genre in the formation of a Mediterranean literature?

4. Intertextuality and intermediality: intertextual references to literary and visual texts from the Mediterranean region and from elsewhere

5. Representation: How is the Mediterranean network, its history and presence, represented/narrated?

6. Social level: the social impact of texts within the Mediterranean, networks of persons and players such as editors, translators, authors in the production, distribution, and consumption of Mediterranean literature

7. Memory: the construction of social/cultural memories, and therefore, identity and otherness in literary works

8. And finally, to what extent does Mediterranean Literature create or actively dissociate the perspective of a Mediterranean Region?

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The book will be published by De Gruyter as a peer-reviewed publication (double blind and open access). If you are interested in participating we ask you to send us an abstract by June 1, 2020:

steffen.schneider@uni-graz.at, angela.fabris@aau.at, albert.goeschl@uni-graz.at