Panel 3: Re-imagining literature
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11:30 -12:45
​Elizabeth Purdy
11:30 - 11:55
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Key words
Epistolarity, Re-invention, Narrative
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Biography
Elizabeth Purdy is currently in the process of studying for a Masters by Research on the topic of the use of apostrophe, epistolarity and the second person in French Literature at the University of Leeds where she also completed her BA in English Literature. She has previously given papers on the use of technology by novelists in constructing a romantic plot line. Her wider research interests include, the relationship between memory and loss and the work of William Faulkner.
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Supervisor(s)
David Platten and Richard Hibbitt
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Re-envisioning the past and re-envisioning its form: Les Affranchis and the transformation of the epistolary style
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In 2006 the editor Claire Debru made a call to authors to write ‘la lettre qu’on porte en soi’ (the letter that they carry within themselves) as a way of overcoming a particular incident from their lives. The outcome of this collection, which continues to be published at my time of writing, is Les Affranchis: a series of epistolary novels by different authors which are completely disconnected from the novels which one would traditionally associated with the epistolary style, such as Liaisons Dangereuses. Indeed, Debru’s premise and the works that have been produced in response to it can be seen to reinvent the epistolary form in a number of ways.
My paper will posit that the books within the Les Affranchis collection, most particularly Nicholas D’Estienne D’Orves’s Je pars à l’entracte offers a new perspective on the epistolary form. Drawing upon theories from Gerard Genette’s work on paratexts (1997) and Janet Gurkin Altman’s Epistolarity (1982), I will discuss the way in which the text moves away from the 18th century notion of the roman par lettres (novel by letters) and instead can be construed as a lettre par roman (a letter via novel). I will argue that rather than a novel in which the major events are manifested through communication, in the lettre par roman all communication is done through acts of story writing. I will address the covers of the texts, their titles and the passages of second person narrative within the texts in order to explore the nuances of this re-imagination. In line with the conference theme I will discuss the ways in which older modes of writing, such as the epistolary novel, must be considered from a new perspective, such as Debru’s, in order to continue to resonate with contemporary modes of communication.
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Gerard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)
Janet Gurkin Altman, Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form (Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1982)
Reimagining Masculinity and the Natural World in Post World War Two British and French Children’s Literature
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Traditionally speaking, masculinity can be understood as behavioural traits seen as typical or expected of men (OED, n.d.), these often including such qualities as bravery, resilience (emotional and physical), strength and power. These are sometimes believed to result from theories that men are natural hunters and breadwinners due to the increased muscularity and testosterone in their physiques (Bradley, 2007: 17). Such traits became even more important during the First and Second World Wars, demanding of men a capacity to perpetrate violent acts and remain strong in the face of significant danger. Masculinity, then, sometimes requires a relative disregard for life that might distance it from associations with nature and the natural world. The nature versus culture dichotomy, a foundational concept in contemporary anthropology, is used to articulate the tensions between two seemingly distinct areas of human life, and has sometimes been attributed gendered dimensions. In a 1972 article ‘Is Female to male as Nature is to Culture?’, Sherry Ortner discusses women’s universal devaluation in terms of their bodies being ‘closer to nature’ (13) due to their centrality in the reproductive process. Man, meanwhile, is equated with culture, as he is less tethered to his body and is able to transcend biology and nature to achieve more (12).
This presentation will argue that postwar French and British children’s literature often reimagines masculinity through a heightened focus on and empathy for nature, often feminising portrayals of masculinity and moving away from conflict resolution through violence, as is typical of male hero figures. It will outline background theory and provide other perspectives on the role of nature in postwar children’s literature before turning to textual analysis to highlight the role of nature in reimagining masculinity in the Chronicles of Narnia (1950-6) by C.S. Lewis and Tistou les Pouces verts by Maurice Druon (1957).
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Bradley, Harriet, 2007. Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Druon, Maurice, [1957] 2017. Tistou les Pouces verts. Paris: Larousse.
Lewis, C.S., [1950-56] 2001. The Chronicles of Narnia. London: HarperCollins.
OED, n.d. Oxford English Dictionary (OED), [online]. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [OED] [Accessed 14th March 2019].
Ortner, Sherry B., 1972. ‘Is Female to male as Nature is to Culture?’ Feminist Studies, [ejournal] 1(2) pp. 5-31.
​Rebecca Elton
11:55 - 12:20
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Key words
Reimagining, masculinity, nature, European, children's literature
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Biography
Rebecca Elton is a PhD researcher in French studies at the University of Leeds exploring masculinities in post World War Two French and British children’s literature, commencing in 2018 with the help of an LCS Studentship Award for Excellence. Her primary research interests relate to comparative literature (particularly Anglophone and Francophone literatures) popular and lowbrow culture, genre and gender. She previously completed an MA thesis exploring female and feminine power in A Song of Ice and Fire (1996-) by George R.R. Martin (also known as Game of Thrones), and French historical series Les Rois maudits (1955-77) by Maurice Druon.
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Supervisor(s)
Professor Diana Holmes and Dr Richard de Ritter
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​Hayley O'Kell
12:20 - 12:45
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Key words
Early Modern, Female Body, Violence, Feminism
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Biography
Hayley O’Kell graduated from the University of Leeds with a First-Class Honours degree in English Literature and Spanish. Her current Masters by Research project examines the prose fiction of María de Zayas and Miguel de Cervantes, taking into consideration the pan- European logic of patriarchal ownership and exploitation. This research is fully funded by the Cowdray Scholarship. In July, Hayley is due to present a paper at Durham’s Early Modern Studies Conference (2019) based on her research. In short, her research interests include Early Modern Spanish and Latin American literature particularly women writers and notions of gender and sexuality.
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Supervisor(s)
Professor Duncan Wheeler and Dr Rebecca Jarman
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Re-reading the female body and reimagining women’s responses to violence in the seventeenth-century prose fiction of María de Zayas and Miguel de Cervantes
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In Early Modern Spain, the female body threads through the humanist, religious and scientific thought of the period as a symbol of potential disorder. Namely, patriarchs assumed that if they could control the “unruly” female body, often through varying forms of enclosure, they could control any threat of social disorder. Early Modern Spanish society was governed by limpieza de sangre, a notorious religious principle and legal requirement which ensured that lineages were not “contaminated” from non-Christian individuals. (Perry, 1990, p.58) In addition to this requirement, the pan-European concept of patriarchal ownership also legitimised male control over women and their bodies. Consistently read by patriarchs as chaotic, lustful and unregulated, María de Zayas and Miguel de Cervantes reread the female body in a far more positive light. Particularly in the short stories of Zayas, her female characters change the way their bodies are read, as a strategy to achieve greater freedom in their androcentric society. Re-reading the tortured and abused female body in Zayas’s second collection of novelas, Desengaños amorosos, will demonstrate how the author reimagined the structural, psychological violence inflicted upon the women of her society.
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Zayas and Cervantes’s short stories provide textual space for a new voice to emerge, namely, that of the avenging woman. Reimagining contemporary women’s responses to sexual violence, their novelas document how their fictional female characters respond to the abuse of men. Illuminated by the Marxist materialist feminist theory of Maria Mies, this paper will explore this new, fictional perspective of the tortured woman and the resistance strategies she uses to regain the autonomy over her body and her life. (Mies, 1998) Often subjecting their perpetrators to similar injuries as the ones they have sustained, Zayas and Cervantes’s heroines give a voice to the seventeenth-century historical cases of rape which often went unpunished and unacknowledged.
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Cervantes Saavedra, M. 2010. Novelas ejemplares I. 27th ed. Sieber, H. (ed). Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra.
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Cervantes Saavedra, M. 1997. Novelas ejemplares II. 17th ed. Sieber, H. (ed). Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra.
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Mies, M. 1988. Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale. London: Zed.
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Perry, M.E. 1990. Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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Zayas y Sotomayor, M. 2017. Desengaños Amorosos. 8th ed. Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra.
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Zayas y Sotomayor, M. 2004. Novelas amorosas y ejemplares. 2nd ed. Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra.