CFP: ACLA [comp lit] conference in puerto rico, 11-14 april 2002
appended below is a call for papers for next spring's ACLA conference . . . for those unfamiliar with the unusual way that conference is structured, it's very much worth pointing out that the ACLA (American Comparative Literature Association) runs multiple day seminars at the annual conference . . . those who give a paper in any seminar are expected to attend the same seminar throughout the conference, thereby creating a very welcome (and all too rare) opportunity for extended dialogue about a single issue . . . participants also have the opportunity to sit in on any other seminars that do not meet at the same time . . . full details may be found at the conference website at http://www.complit.ucla.edu/
the following proposal is designed to take advantage of the opportunity for extended rumination about a topic that opens up in multiple directions
requests for further information should be addressed to Mike Frank mfrank@bentley.edu
1-2 page proposals by October 1, 2001, should also be sent to mfrank@bentley.edu with copies to Kathleen Komar Komar@ucla.edu.
MCGUFFIN AS METAPHOR/METONYMY
Alfred Hitchcock often talked about his use of a *McGuffin,* an element in a film that sets the plot in motion, but ultimately turns out to be of little interest -- for example the "government secrets" that motivate the action of North by Northwest but that almost no one in the audienceand hardly any of the characters in the film--ever thinks about at all.
Discussions of the McGuffin have generally been limited to its role as a simple narrative trick used by Hitchcock. But it's likely that this device is more than a mere trick, and that it may be found in places other than Hitchcock films. That likelihood is the topic that this seminar proposes to consider.
The consideration will take two forms, narratological and thematic.
NARRATOLOGICAL: A device as useful as the McGuffin certainly must appear elsewhere than in Hitchcock. Part of the seminar will explore the use of McGuffins in other narratives. Papers are invited discussing the use of the McGuffin -- or similar devices -- in other works, or discussing the narratological implications of the device itself.
THEMATIC: Narrative devices have implications. Papers are invited considering these implications, either abstractly -- as a matter of theoretical interest -- or in relationship to the way a McGuffin shapes the meaning of particular narratives, both fiction and film. Sample questions might include:
--What are we to make of a narrative in which the interest of the characters and the interest of the audience do not coincide?
--Does the reliance on a McGuffin suggest a lack of a significant goals shared by characters and audience? What might such a lack reveal about the discursive community in which it plays a shaping part?
--How might we want to read the distance between the McGuffin [the ostensible interest in the story] and what we take as its 'real' interest?
This seminar, in short, seeks to explore the ways in which Hitchcock's 'innocent' term could be used as a useful tool for analyzing narrative.
Papers that explore this question from any vantage point are welcome.