cfp.english.upenn.edu

Paul et Virginie

44th Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
March 21-24, 2013
Boston, Massachusetts
Host Institution: Tufts University

Originally published in French 1788, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie has been translated throughout the 19th century, notably into English, Spanish, and German. Since the early 1990s, however, this Mauritian pastoral romance has fallen out of critical focus. Consequently, this panel will re-read Paul et Virginie and the ways in which its tropes have been interpreted and re-appropriated in subsequent artistic production, including film and opera. How, and why, do Paul et Virginie’s famous representations of romance, death, and cultural encounter continue to re-appear in literatures of other genres, languages, nations, and cultures? How has this European narrative of colonization been adapted across languages, centuries, and multiple locations?

We invite papers, in English, from any national or geographical literary discipline. Papers can comment on the original Paul et Virginie and/or the re-appropriations of Saint-Pierre’s novel. Possible tropes to consider include, but are not limited to:

Virginie’s enigmatic death
Symbols of mestizaje and transculturation
Creole culture
Colonial botany and science
Gender and settlement colonialism
Coloniality and post-coloniality
Romance
Nature and/vs. Culture
Travel and displacement
Maroon culture
Race
The island
Ship and shipwreck
Exoticism
Intertextual networks
Women, money and class in the colonies vs. the metropole
Indian Ocean

Please submit 300-500 word abstracts to: Kristen Meylor, kmeylor@sas.upenn.edu by September 30, 2011.