What follows is a Call for Papers. We are sending this to the Renais-L
conference because we are hoping to receive some interesting proposals on
the following Medieval and early-modern authors as characters: DANTE,
CERVANTES, CYRANO DE BERGERAC, CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, PETRARCH, CHAUCER,
LOUISE LABE, MONTAIGNE, RABELAIS,
Other authors whom we feel still ought to be included in the volume are:
MOLIERE, VOLTAIRE, CHATTERTON, MARY SHELLEY, P. B. SHELLEY, COLERIDGE,
DICKENS, WILDE, THOMAS MANN, THE BRONTES. Obviously, these last authors are
neither Medieval nor Renaissance. We would appreciate it, however, if you
could bring this Call for Papers to the attention of your colleagues.
Yours faithfully, Paul Franssen and Ton Hoenselaars (Utrecht University)
CALL FOR PAPERS
THE AUTHOR AS CHARACTER IN WORLD LITERATURE
On the crossroads between historical novel, biography, and
Kuenstlerroman, there is an international genre that has been
growing in importance over the last 100 years or so: novels,
short stories, plays, films, dialogues (of the dead), and
dramatic monologues concerned with real-life authors. An early
example is the figure of Virgil, whose ghost haunts medieval
works, providing auctoritas to the medieval poet; more recently,
Shakespeare and Goethe have been turned into fictional
protagonists by Oscar Wilde, Anthony Burgess, and Thomas Mann.
Unlike serious biographies, these works supplement or even
replace the documented facts of the earlier author's life with
fictional speculation; they differ from other historical fiction
in that the modern author is engaged in a dialogue with an
illustrious predecessor; and they are unlike the Kuenstlerroman in
that the author can only represent his/her own development and
ideas about the function of art in displaced form, by projecting
them on to the earlier author.
Due to their hybrid nature, pseudo-biographies of authors have
largely escaped critical attention as a genre so far.
Nonetheless, they confront the reader with a number of
interesting questions. First of all, to what extent can we trust
a fictionalized account of the life of a great writer as
biography (Stoppard)? Is it really a faithful portrait, which
makes plausible inferences from the known facts about an author's
life (Cyrano de Bergerac)? Are its speculations built on a
substratum of reliable documentary evidence, or on an
autobiographical reading of the author's works, and if the
latter, is that at all defensible? Is the work presented as a
kind of biography or as a mere fantasy? Does the author show a
postmodern awareness of the limitations of any attempt at
objective representation (Ackroyd)?
Alternatively, the reader may see the pseudo-biography as
pure fiction. In that case, he may wonder why the later author
took a historical figure as his/her character rather than a
purely fictional one. Is he/she in any sense attempting to
appropriate the illustrious writer from the past for his/her own
purposes, artistic, or political like Cinna the Poet in *Julius
Caesar*, or Daniel Defoe in Coetzee's novel? Can he/she even help
seeing the older author in the light of his/her own age, his/her
own personal tastes, his/her own ideas about the genesis and
function of art? Is every act of depicting a predecessor doomed
to end up as oblique self-portrayal, as a displaced
Kuenstlerroman? What role does the older author play for him/her:
a father- or mother-figure that provides legitimization for
his/her own approach to art? Or someone whose influence he/she is
anxious to exorcise, in an act of oedipal rebellion? (Harold
Bloom).
By extension, these questions are also applicable to pseudo-
biographies concerned with other kinds of creative artists. When
Browning writes a dramatic monologue for the painter Fra Lippo
Lippi, is he perhaps also thinking about his own craft, displaced
by one further dimension into a sister art? Can Burgess forget
his own musical and literary compositions when he is writing a
novel like *Mozart and the Wolfgang*?
We welcome articles about these questions for a book we are
editing, with the working title of *The Author as Character*. The
article must be written in English, and should be 4000 to 5000
words in length. The deadline for contributions is 1 November
1995. The subject must be the pseudo-biographical use of an
author or comparable creative artist in the works of a later
author. In view of the international readership envisaged, we
prefer articles about works in English or available in English
translation, and involving major authors. Other dimensions than
the ones mentioned above, such as those involving gender issues,
nationality, race, or creed, are also welcomed.
Should you wish to contribute an article to our volume on
*The Author as Character*, please submit your proposal of 250-300
words by 31 March 1995. Proposals should be sent to:
Dr. Ton Hoenselaars
Department of English
Trans 10
3512 JK Utrecht
The Netherlands
030-537845
e-mail: Ton.Hoenselaars@let.ruu.nl
or to
Dr. Paul J.C.M. Franssen
Department of English
Trans 10
3512 JK Utrecht
The Netherlands
030-536665
e-mail: P.Franssen@let.ruu.nl