Literary Histories of Literatures

Evénement

Information publiée le vendredi 21 septembre 2007 par Vincent Debaene (source : Vincent Debaene)

Du 26 octobre 2007 au 27 octobre 2007, Columbia University, New York

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Why do writers read literature?

How do they reinvent the past?

Do writers and scholars agree on the history of literature?

Academic literary history, written by professors and scholars, has experienced its autonomous development, both as a discipline and as a genre, from the end of the 19th Century, and its advancement has been widely researched. In contrast, not much attention has been paid to an alternative history of literature, which is told by the authors themselves. However, writers, just as scholars, keep producing histories of literature. In their works just as in their writings or interviews on their works, they give shape to their collective venture, create genealogies and invent precursors, in a global construction which can either complement or compete with the “official” scholarly history.

The purpose of this colloquium is to examine the literary history of writers – writerly literary history vs. scholarly literary history – as a creative one, that is, to analyze the formative role of this other literary history and literary memory for literature itself, for literature in progress.

This conference is part of an international program conducted by the group research "Littératures françaises du XXe siècle" at Paris IV-Sorbonne University.