Stevenson and Pleasure
Université Bordeaux Montaigne
16th-18th June 2022
All sessions will take place in the ‘Salle des thèses’ room at the ‘Maison de la Recherche’ on the Pessac Campus (get off Tram B at the Montaigne-Montesquieu stop).
Thursday 16th June
8h30-9h00: Welcome and registration, morning coffee.
9h-9h30: Opening address by Nathalie Jaëck (CLIMAS), Lesley Graham (LACES) and Julie Gay (FORELLIS, CLIMAS).
9h30-10h30: Keynote address – Jean-Pierre Naugrette, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3 (chair: Nathalie Jaëck)
Stevenson and the Pleasure of Nightmares.
10h30: coffee break
11h-12h30: Session 1 – Pleasure and artistic versatility (chair: Lesley Graham)
- Richard Dury (Honorary fellow, University of Edinburgh), Stevenson and Charm.
- Richard Ambrosini (University of Rome), Robert Louis Stevenson, Versifier.
- Robert Louis Abrahamson (University of Maryland), ‘The ship blew up with a glorious detonation': What kind of pleasure do we enjoy from Stevenson's Fables?
12h30: Presentation of the European Cultural Route ‘In the Footsteps of Robert Louis Stevenson’ by Michel Legros, followed by an apéritif.
13h-14h: Lunch (buffet on site)
14h-16h: Session 2 – Travel and the pleasures of the map (chair: Julie Gay)
- Xavier Amelot et Nathalie Jaëck (Université Bordeaux Montaigne), ‘But somehow it was never Treasure Island to me.’ The elusive climactic map of Treasure Island.
- Martin White (European Cultural Route), The Hunting of the Snark Skelt.
- Andrew Brown and Hervé Gournay (Société Historique de Maroilles), Robert Louis Stevenson and Pleasure in An Inland Voyage.
- Kévin Cristin (Aix-Marseille Université), An 'invalid marching to and fro upon the roads': pleasure and exertion in Robert Louis Stevenson’s early travel narratives.
16h-16h30: coffee break
16h30-18h: Session 3 – Games and pleasure (chair: Richard Dury)
- Caroline Crépin (Université de Lyon 3 et Paris 10), Seeking and hiding: the linguistic concealment of pleasure in R. L. Stevenson’s work.
- Caroline Howitt (Heriot-Watt University), Romance, Pleasure & Wellbeing.
- Audrey Murfin (Sam Houston State University), Pleasure for Profit: Opium in The Wrecker.
19h: Cocktail reception.
19h30: 'An Apology for Idlers': a presentation with a dramatic reading by Robert-Louis Abrahamson and Richard Dury outside the Maison de la recherche.
Friday 17th June
9h-10h30: Session 4 – The Pleasures of the Shorter Text (chair: Antoine Ertlé)
- Burkhard Niederhoff (University of Bochum, Germany), The Pleasure of the Intertext: Aesthetic Self-Fashioning in 'Providence and the Guitar'.
- Lena Linne (Ruhr University Bochum), ‘[A] gaming-table, a duel, and a Roman amphitheatre'? Pleasure and the Suicide Club.
- Patrick Antoniol (Université de Lille 3), Plaisir d’écrire, plaisir de lire, plaisir de classe : où sont les vrais plaisirs ?
10h30: coffee break
11h-12h: Session 5 – The pleasures of the text (chair: Richard Ambrosini)
- Penny Fielding (University of Edinburgh), Stevenson and the Pleasures of Cosmopolitanism.
- Lucio de Capitani (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), ‘Greedy of all Pleasures'/ 'Divinely Free from Malice': Enjoyment and Ethics in Stevenson and Melville.
12h-14h: Lunch
14h-16h00: Session 6 – Thrilling pleasures (chair: Jean-Pierre Naugrette)
- Adam Kozaczka (Texas A&M International University), Reenacting the 'Excitements' of Eighteenth-Century Scots Law in Stevenson’s Historical Novels.
Linda Dryden (Napier University), ‘I had learned to dwell with pleasure, as a beloved daydream, on the thought of the separation of these elements': The thrill of being Mr Hyde.
- Pam Lock (Bristol University), ‘A favourable stage of drink’: Re-framing Robert Louis Stevenson's approach to alcohol, health, and pleasure.
- Gilles Ménégaldo (Université de Poitiers), Dreadful Pleasures in Some Filmic Adaptations of 'The Body Snatcher' (1884) and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886).
16h00-16h30: coffee break
16h30-18h00: Session 7 – Pleasure and literary correspondence/collaboration (chair: Caroline Howitt)
- Hilary J Beattie (Columbia University, NY), The pleasures and the perils of collaboration: Robert Louis Stevenson, Belle Strong and Graham Balfour, in Samoa and beyond.
- Thomson Moore Prentice (independent scholar), A Tale of Two Louis - Crossing Paths in the Cevennes.
- Mafalda Cipollone (independent scholar),'It is like a wind blowing to one out of fairyland': the Mentone Letters.
20h: Conference dinner, restaurant La Belle Epoque (registration required)
Saturday 18th June
9h-11h: Session 8 – The Pleasures of adaptations (chair: Gilles Ménégaldo)
- Lesley Graham (Université de Bordeaux), The pleasure of following Stevenson.
- Ali Bacon (Independent scholar and writer), Mrs Sitwell, pleasure or pain?
- Jean-Paul Gabilliet (Université Bordeaux Montaigne), How Charles Crumb’s childhood obsession with Stevenson’s Treasure Island finally drove him crazy.
- Nicolas Labarre (Université Bordeaux Montaigne), Playing the classics? The strange case of the Jekyll and Hyde video game adaptations.
11h-11h30: Announcement of the winner of the Fables Prize
11h30: Excursion to Saint-Emilion (registration required)