The CRILA short story research group(JE2536) of the Université d'Angers, France, will be hosting an internationalconference in collaboration with Edge Hill University, U.K. on “The Figure ofthe Author in the Short Story in English,” 8-9 April 2011 at La Maison desSciences Humaines, Université d'Angers, France.
Plenaryspeaker: Charles E. May, ProfessorEmeritus, California State University, Long Beach.
The specter of the author has haunted thescene of contemporary literary criticism since the advent of 20thcentury authorial displacements. William K. Wimsatt Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsleyheralded the age of Anglo-American New Criticism with “The Intentional Fallacy”(1946) and the “The Affective Fallacy” (1949), insisting that the meaning of aliterary text is to be found in the text's status as an independent artifactand not in authorial intention. The author is later explicitly declared defunctin France with Roland Barthes' infamous “The Death of the Author” (1967),voicing the concerns of post-structuralism where the author is écriture rather than a historical,psychological figure. This tendentious essay, along with Michel Foucault's“Author function” in his 1969 essay “What is an Author?” helped foster an auraof suspicion and controversy around authorial identity, and the repercussions of authorial “death” or“disappearance” continue to ripple through literary criticism today. The authorhas “died” only to be replaced by a proliferation of conceptual guises:“implied author,” “text,” “structure,” “intentionality,” or even, perversely,“reader.” French scholar Antoine Compagnon even suggests in Le Demon de la Théorie (1998) that theauthor is like a demon who is virtually impossible to expel from literarycriticism. In the meantime, the rise ofCreative Writing as a distinctive form of critical discourse in the US, UK,Australia and elsewhere, seems to place the biographical author once more at centrestage.
Wherever we turn, we are confrontedwith the question of authorship,particularly if we juxtapose criticism with the public sphere, where theexpression “death of the author” meets with bewilderment as readers rush tobook signings and author events Many authors actively cultivate authorialpersonas through websites, blogs, facebook and twitter . This conferenceproposes to re-investigate the question of authorship through the lens of theshort story, as the brevity of the genre and its emphasis on form seem tointensify an impression of authorial presence. As Charles May has observed,short stories are “more dependent on craftsmanship and exhibit more authorialcontrol than novels” (May 1994, xxvi.). We propose to bring together literaryauthors and scholars to examine the issue of authorial manifestations in theshort story. Some questions to consider might include, but are not limited to,the following:
How has critical method evolvedsince 20th century “attacks” on the figure of the author ?
How might we assess our currentcritical practices regarding the authorial figure?
What concepts, such as the “impliedauthor,” have emerged in the wake of authorial “death,” and how might theseconcepts be re-evaluated today?
What role does authorship(individual, corporate, anonymous, erroneous) play in both the composition andreception of literary works?
How might we draw connectionsbetween the theorization and study of authorship and the critical study ofspecific fictional works?
In what ways do short narrativesamplify or attenuate perceptions of the authorial figure?
Has the gap between authors offiction and the study of authorship been adequately addressed over the last 50years? How do we perceive this gap in contemporary critical circles? How mightwe confront the perspectives of fiction writers and critics?
How do political contexts orconcerns (race, class, gender….) affect perceptions of authorship? How does theauthorial figure function in politically saturated fictional texts?
How do historical or culturalcontexts affect concepts of authorship? In what ways have modern andcontemporary writers recovered historical modes of authorship? (For example,contemporary appropriations of fairy tale or other forms of collectivenarrative (oral or written)).
How do contemporary practices andtheories of intertextuality, parody, pastiche, affect our perception ofauthorship?
How do metafictional/metatextualmodes allow us to contemplate the question of authorship? How do such modesaffect perceptions of authorial presence or absence?
We also welcome presentationsdealing with authorial issues arising from translation or cinematographicadaptation and studies of authorial performance or marketing techniques.Presentations from short story authors are particularly welcome.
A selection of articles will bepublished in two peer review journals: ShortStory in Theory and Practice (www.edgehill.ac.uk/shortstory/shortfiction),published by Intellect Press, and The Journal of the Short Story in English (http://jsse.revues.org/), published byUniversité d'Angers
Paper proposals of approximately 300 words in English,followed by a short bio-bibliography, should be sent to the followingconference organizers for 15 December 2010:
MichelleRyan-Sautour (michelle.ryan-sautour@univ-angers.fr)
Ailsa Cox (Coxa@edgehill.ac.uk)