FROM GOETHE TO GIDE: FEMINISM, AESTHETICS AND THE FRENCH AND GERMAN
LITERARY CANON 1770-1930
21 and 22 November 2003
at the Institute of Germanic Studies and the Institute of Romance
Studies, University of London
What impact have feminist critical methods and perspectives made on our
understanding of canonical male French and German authors and how might
those methods lead to fruitful reappraisals of these authors and
insights into the way in which a canon of literature is formed? This
conference will explore the assumptions inherent in many of these
writers' creative works and in their critical standpoints regarding,
for example, literary judgement and value and thus illuminate the
importance of gender in the development of aesthetics and conceptions
of the artist from the Enlightenment to Modernism. The aim is to
enlarge and advance discussion among those - men and women - who use
feminist criticism about its impact and applications, and among
comparative literature specialists about the synergies involved in
canon formation in the French-German context.
Programme
Friday 21 November 2003 (Institute of Germanic Studies)
1.00- 1.30 Arrival
1.30-1.45 Introduction: 'Framing the Questions'
1.45-3.45 'Enlightenment' perspectives (Goethe, Schiller and
Rousseau)Chair: Professor Helen Watanabe O'Kelly (Oxford)
Professor Gail Hart (University of California, Irvine):'Errant
Striving: Goethe, Faust and the Feminist Reader'
Professor Lesley Sharpe (University of Exeter): 'Gender
transcended: Schiller's Drama and Aesthetics'
Professor Judith Still (University of Nottingham): 'The
Stranger within: the figure of l'hôte in Rousseau'
3.45-4.30 Tea
4.30-6.00 Romanticism revisited (1) ((ETA Hoffmann and Heine)
Chair: Professor Ritchie Robertson (Oxford)
Dr Ricarda Schmidt (University of Manchester): 'Male foibles,
female critique and narrative capriciousness.
On the function of gender in conceptions of art and subjectivity in
E.T.A. Hoffmann'
Professor Robert Holub (University of California,
Berkeley):'Heine's "Mädchen und Frauen": Women and Emancipation in the
Writings of Heinrich Heine'
6.0 Vin d'honneur followed by dinner
Saturday 22 November 2003 (Institute of Romance Studies)
9.15-10-45 Romanticism revisited (2) (Stendhal and
Baudelaire)Chair: Professor Diana Knight (Nottingham)
Dr Ann Jefferson (University of Oxford): 'Stendhal and female
agency'
Professor Rosemary Lloyd (University of Indiana, Bloomington):
'Mundus muliebris: Baudelaire's world of women?'
10.45-11.00 Coffee
11.00-1.00 Writing 19th -century society (Fontane, Flaubert and
Zola)Chair: Dr Michael Minden (Cambridge)
Dr Patricia Howe (QMW, London): 'Manly men and womanly women:
aesthetics and gender in Fontane's Effi Briest and Der Stechlin'
Professor Mary Orr (University of Exeter): 'The disquiet of
death: Flaubert's cautionary tales and the art of the absolute'
Dr Jann Matlock (University College, London): 'Bodies in
crisis: Zola, gender and the dilemmas of history'
1.00-2.00 Lunch
2.00-3.30 Reviewing Modernism (Kafka and Gide) Chair: Professor
Elizabeth Fallaize (Oxford)
Professor Elizabeth Boa (University of Nottingham): 'About a
Boy: the Flight from Manhood in Kafka's America Novel'
Professor Naomi Segal (University of Reading): 'André Gide and
the making of the perfect child'
3.30-4.00 Tea
4.00-5.00 Round table discussion: 'Questioning the Frames'
The conference was set up by Mary Orr ([log in to unmask]) and Lesley
Sharpe ([log in to unmask]) of the School of Modern Languages,
University of Exeter, and is being administered by the Institute of
Romance Studies. Registration forms can be downloaded from the IRS
website: www.sas.ac.uk/irs or contact [log in to unmask], tel: 020 7862
8677. Concessions are available for postgraduates.
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Professor Lesley Sharpe
Department of German
University of Exeter
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