European Society for the Study of English (ESSE) CONFERENCE, University of Lausanne, Switzerland

26-30 August, 2024

Convenors:

Gerd Bayer (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität, FAU, Germany) gerd.bayer@fau.de

Sonia Villegas-López (University of Huelva, Spain) villegas@uhu.es

Online seminar proposal:

28. TRANSNATIONAL NARRATIVES: EUROPEAN WOMEN’S FICTION IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD

Traditional approaches to the ‘origins of the novel’ question have often overlooked the role played by women’s contribution to the development of the genre. Usually, formal realist criticism has underestimated minor works, anonymous texts, fiction signed by women, as well as reprints, abridgments and translations. This seminar proposes a discussion of women’s printed fiction during the seventeenth century from a transnational and European perspective to help us situate the early days of the novel in context. We invite papers which discuss crosscurrents or influences among texts authored by European women, as well as about biographical and/or cultural relationships at work between women writers and intellectuals in the period of study. We aim to discuss whether we can trace a continuum in European women’s fiction which explains transitions of genre/gender and literary culture, from the perspective of transculturality, drawing on all literary sources as fields of cross-media influences. We will consider papers about English women’s native fiction, like Aphra Behn, Delarivier Manley, Mary Pix, as well as about translations and adaptations of continental women’s works printed in England, as the examples of Marie de Lafayette, Mlle de la Roche Guilhem, Madeleine de Scudéry, or María de Zayas, make clear.

Please submit your 250-word abstracts and a brief bio directly to the convenors of the seminar by 31 January 2024.