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Beyond Frankenstein’s Shadow: Mary Shelley’s Works and Their European Reception (Nancy, France)

Beyond Frankenstein’s Shadow: Mary Shelley’s Works and Their European Reception (Nancy, France)

Publié le par Marc Escola (Source : Antonella Braida)

Call for Papers

Beyond Frankenstein’s Shadow: Mary Shelley’s Works and Their European Reception

IDEA, Université de Lorraine, Nancy, 29 April 2016 

 

It has become a cliché of writing on Frankenstein to note the dissimilarity
between the novel and its eponymous but diverse cultural reproductions.
 Fred Botting, Making Monstruous: Frankenstein, Criticism, Theory (1991)

 

Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein is at the origin of a modern myth that has been fuelled by diverse cultural reproduction. This has generated a long-lasting metonymy in which Shelley has been viewed mainly or exclusively as ‘the author of Frankenstein’. And while the last twenty years have witnessed a flowering in the study of Shelley’s work, there is still a need to approach ‘the inclusive Mary Shelley’ (Nora Crook). Mary Shelley’s novels explore a number of complex themes, such as the choice of political liberty over love, or republicanism over tyranny (Valperga); the extinction of humanity and the impossibility of an ideal political system (The Last Man, The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck); the failure of the Byronic hero with respect to love and family relationships (Lodore); as well as incest and paternal tyranny (Mathilda, Falkner). Her fiction offers interesting challenges to the critic not least because of her narrators’ polyphonic, interweaving voices.

This conference intends to bring together scholars interested in an overall reassessment of Mary Shelley’s work and its European reception. With a view to retracing the process of transmission, recreation and translation that have marked the past 200 years, contributions focusing on the role played by different media in the reception of her work - dramatic or cinematic adaptations, illustrations of her writings, biographical studies - are particularly welcome.

This conference invites contributions on:

Any aspect of Mary Shelley’s fictional, historical, critical and autobiographical work
and its European reception will be considered. These may include:

  • Reading Mary Shelley in the light of contemporary critical practices
  • Mary Shelley’s critical reception today
  • Theatrical and/or film adaptations of her work
  • Visual illustrations in/of her writings
  • The Frankenstein myth
  • Editing the Mary Shelley canon
  • Mary Shelley’s role as Percy Bysshe Shelley’s editor
  • Echoes and interrelationships between Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s works
  • Approaches to translating Mary Shelley
  • Mary Shelley’s European reception
  • The influence of Mary Shelley on the European novel

The organizers invite proposals of no more than 300 words for 30-minute presentations on any aspect of Mary Shelley’s works and their European reception.
Proposals, together with a short biographical statement and institutional affiliation, should be sent to antonella.braida-laplace@univ-lorraine.fr by 15 December 2015.

More informations… http://idea-udl.org/beyond-frankensteins-shadow/