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Our volume aims to include contributions to the field of literary reception studies, based on the aesthetic, ideological or psychological variations in the public or individual response to literary works in the course of time, focusing on the human capacity for an understanding of the other through (re)reading literature. The analyses will focus on the personal and collective change triggered by the emergence of a new work into public attention, while the angle of approach will be from the perspective of reception and response theories.
Possible topics will focus on criticism, translation and performance as dialogical modes of understanding and reception of the literary text.
Reception through criticism:
• critical reception of a literary work (including individual authors’ reading of their or their colleagues’ works)
• individual or public reaction to the publishing of a literary work/dramatic performance/translation of a foreign author’s work
• structures of appeal of literary works (including a discussion of comic, melodramatic, or tragic elements as an ingredient for public success)
• the conflicted nature of a literary work as a source of critical debate
• the personality of the author as a key-factor to the work’s public and critical success/failure
• the various contexts of reception of a literary work
• the creative role of difference, misreading and deviation in interpretation
• issues of responsibility involved by literary criticism/translation/performance (responsiveness and responsibility)
• the role of monographies
• theoretical approaches of the reception field
Reception through translation:
• translation as the first reading of a foreign text
• the practical challenge of “equivalence” versus the th teoretical ideal of “transsubsantiation”
• translating seen as “playing host to alterity”
• issues of interlingual transfer and indeterminacy
• assessments of the translators’ achievement
• the textual resistance to interpretation (difficulties and obscurities of the source text that render translation/critical interpretation difficult/impossible)
• the dialogical nature of the translating process and views on the hospitability of language
• translator’s ethics: the concept of restitution or the morality of appropriation via translation
• translator’s methods: foreignizing and domesticating;
• translating for the theater: feel and technique
• cultural implications of the translating act (cultural translation)
Performance, performativity and censorship:
• the purposes of intertextuality
• the aesthetic / cultural meaning of literary versions (ex: reverse reading)
• ethnic, racial, feminine/masculine reception of literature
• national and linguistic boundaries of literary texts and their impact on the field of reception
• contemporary changes in textuality
• dramatic adaptations of literary texts
• book reviewing as an institution: functions and responsibility
• the impact of the internet on a work’s reception
• the history of a particular piece of writing and the role of criticism for its destiny
• reception and cultural politics in totalitarian regimes
Note:
Paper proposals should include the title of the presentation, a brief abstract of at least 200 words and a 100 word biographical note with details regarding your affiliation and professional career. They should be sent in a single attached Word document to reception.studies@yahoo.com by May 1, 2012.
Should you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact the editors of the volume, Dr Adriana Bulz and Dr Monica Manolachi from the University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania.
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