Zeit: 13:00 - 21:00
Ort: Senatssaal
Victorian Intertexts and Subtexts is a one day conference jointly organised by Dr. Monika Pietrzak-Franger (Siegen) and Dr. Mark Berninger (Mainz).
In his book Inventing the Victorians (2001), Matthew Sweet wonders, “[s]uppose that everything we think we know about the Victorians is wrong. That in the century which has elapsed since 1901, we have misread their culture, their history, their lives – perhaps deliberately, in order to satisfy our sense of ourselves as liberated Moderns” (ix). Today, the strangely alien and also strangely familiar Victorians continue to be imagined, re-imagined, adapted, appropriated and revisited in a number of ways. This often includes opening up an intertextual perspective which reaches further back and touches on the textual roots of 19th century culture like John Milton's Paradise Lost, Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. These textual roots include radical and unsettling subtexts of sexuality, femininity, evil and horror, which were often suppressed on the surface of Victorian writing and excluded from the common image of the era as an age of stability, strict morality and technological as well as social progress. Yet, the underlying tensions of the age still remained tangible and, in turn, now resurface in modern approaches towards the 19th century.
This one day conference focuses on the intertextual relationships of contemporary adaptations of the Victorian era. It offers a platform for the students of Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz and the University of Siegen to explore such issues as contemporary “writing back” and the deconstruction of Victorian hegemonies. It will also touch on 19th century subtexts and the (unacknowledged?) presence of Victorian values today. The question of sexuality, gender and servitude, as well as the metafictional theme of creation will be a special focus of the meeting. The participants will discuss the above concerns with particular attention to Alasdair Gray’s novel Poor Things (1992), which will constitute the common ground for the conference discussions.
Kontakt: -
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