Call for Papers

Erotic Literature: Adaptation and Translation in Europe and Asia

29-30 June 2015 University of Cambridge, Centre for Research in the Arts, 
Humanities and Social Sciences (CRASSH)

Organizers: Johannes D. Kaminski, Rudolph Ng

Keynotes: Eva Illouz, Laura Moretti

This conference will address the semantic demarcations of erotic 
literature. Transgressive by nature, no genre of literature is more defined 
by the social and aesthetic conventions that it playfully disregards or 
unwillingly reproduces.

Leopold von Sacher Masoch’s Venus in Furs (1870) is an excellent example of 
an erotic novel that has prompted a multitude of adaptions. Its 
translations have resonated strongly in different socio-cultural settings, 
no doubt in part as a result of translators’ efforts to tailor the text to 
new audiences. Film adaptations cover a broad spectrum, from mainstream 
soft-core porn to acclaimed psychological dramas such as Roman Polanski’s 
latest feature film (2013). Often enough, the cross-cultural transfer of 
erotic literature must negotiate incompatible concepts. When Franz Kuhn 
translated the 17th century Chinese text The Carnal Prayer Mat 肉蒲團 into 
German for the first time (1959), he glossed over the finesse of its 
physiological detail. The anthropological conceptions that inform the text 
simply proved too inconsistent with contemporaneous Western notions of the 
body. At any rate, upon publication, Swiss authorities decided to place the 
translation on the index.

Bridging linguistic and topological disjunctions, the transpository process 
entails a delicate balancing act, which, for Roland Barthes, comprises the 
pleasure of reading itself (cf. The Pleasure of the Text, 1973): in each 
case, the rhythm between the said and the unsaid must be measured anew, as 
different languages and genres answer to different aesthetic sensibilities.

This conference aims to unite literary and scholars of the visual arts with 
an interdisciplinary ambit. Contributions will touch upon European and 
Asian topics or both. Possible case studies will be concerned with one or 
more of the following questions:

- How do the demarcations of the erotic vary a) when a text is transposed 
into different literary genres, b) when adapted to film or other visual 
media, or c) when translated into another language?

- Which factors determine the fluctuating rules that determine the lines 
between the explicit and implicit? Who dominates the discourse of the 
erotic, if not white middle-aged men?

- How do adaptations pierce the thin layer that separates private enjoyment 
and public outrage? How do juridical and aesthetic concerns intertwine when 
the erotic is distinguished from the pornographic?

- If the erotic only works within such defined cultural parameters, how is 
the 50 Shades-effect possible—as a global phenomenon?

Proposals for a 20-minute paper should include a 250-word abstract 
(alongside a mini-bio) and should be sent to [log in to unmask] 
by 15 November 2014.
 
Conference website: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/25657

Supported by the Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social 
Sciences (CRASSH), Cambridge, and the Tiarks Fund of the Department of 
German, Cambridge.


-- 
Dr Johannes Kaminski
British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Cambridge
Department of German & Dutch
[log in to unmask]