MODERN GERMAN STUDIES GRADUATE SEMINAR
Summer Symposium 2007
Space & Time in Literature, Media and the Arts
Trinity Term 2007, 28th April 2007, University of Oxford
CALL FOR PAPERS
According to the Aristotelian definition of the three unities, time, space
and plot are essential and equal elements of drama and by extension
narrative fiction. Moreover, the three are closely related: any plot
consists of actions in time and space. The constitutive status of time and
space is also evident in the relation between painting and poetry as
conceived by Simonides and Horace. Even though paintings depict bodies in
space and stories present actions in time, Simonides and Horace still
thought it appropriate to call them the 'sister arts'. Poetry, drama and
narrative could also depict bodies in space and paintings actions in time.
At the start of the modern period Lessing challenged that claim. In his
treatise Laocoon he maintained that the visual arts are the media of space,
because their signs are co-existent. The medium of literature, on the other
hand, is essentially a medium of time, as it consists of successive signs,
mirroring the linearity of actions.
Where do we stand today - 240 years after the publication of Lessing's
Laocoon - with regard to the relationship between space and time in
literature, the media and the arts? Do we accept Lessing's radical
disjunction of space and time and of the arts associated with each? Are
there forms of literature which try to depict one while leaving out the
other? Thus, can there be literature with space and without time or with
time and without space?
But more general questions can be asked about space, time and their
relationship: Are there different types of space literature and other media
open up, such as psychological space, emotional space or virtual space? What
is their relationship? How do poets, writers and artists capture the
difference in urban and rural space? Is language by itself necessarily
spatial? Is time in literature essentially linear? If time is linear, is
space always continuous? Is the treatment of time and space in lyric poetry
different from that in other forms of literature? Do modern writers
negotiate a new relationship between time, space and plot?
Our conference hopes to address these and similar questions related to the
topic. We invite contributions on all periods, genres, media, and styles of
German, Austrian, Swiss, and related literature and culture for a symposium
to be held in Trinity Term 2007, 28th April 2007. Papers are welcome equally
in German or English. If you want to present a paper, please send the title
and a small abstract to [log in to unmask] by 31th March 2007.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Daniel Lambauer ([log in to unmask])
Abigail Dunn ([log in to unmask])
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