romantic

CFP George Gissing and Born in Exile

2017 celebrates the 125th anniversary of Gissing’s Born in Exile (1892), a novel that addresses so many crises of faith—in religion, science, marriage, and class, for instance—in the nineteenth century. In celebration, we invite contributions for proposed panels on Gissing and Born in Exile in the Annual Literary London Society Conference, held on 13-14 July 2017, at the Institute of English Studies in the University of London. Papers may explore any aspect of Gissing’s writing but they must speak to the conference’s focus: “Fantastic London: Dream, Speculation and Nightmare.” Papers might address:

Through depictions of forests and seashores, animals and plants, the wild and the domestic, Hawthorne’s writings abound with explorations of the human relationship to the physical environment. Yet the moral and ethical significance of nature as physical, biological environment has often been overlooked in critical interpretations of “Nature” as symbol in Hawthornian romance.

Reminder:

American Literature Association Call for Proposals

The Emerson Society will sponsor two panels at the annual meeting of the American Literature Association, to be held in Boston, MA, from May 25-28, 2017. For information about the conference, see http://americanliteratureassociation.org/calls/annual-conference/.

Emerson and Social Justice     

2017 is the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen's death. Austen has become one of the most discussed and beloved literary figures; indeed, her status as one of our most beloved literary figures has often influenced the ways in which her life and works are discussed within critical circles. Eve Sedgwick famously announced that Austen criticism is "notable not just for its timidity and banality but for its unresting exaction of the spectacle of a Girl Being Taught a Lesson." This special issue of Rhizomes invites critical articles and creative works that dismiss both this legacy of timidity and the tendency to exact pedagogical spectacles through scholarship.

Romance novels have often been dismissed by critics because of their nature as a popular genre and for being written and read largely by women. However, in the last decade a number of scholars have approached the study of the romance novel with critical rigor and avoiding the condescending treatment of previous analysis. Quite often in romance novels we encounter characters that have very different backgrounds: come from different countries and cultures, speak different languages, belong to very different social strata or are, in some other way, an “Other” to the rest of the characters and/or the intended readers.