"Fiction on Fiction: Metafictions and Reflexive Representation -- Philosophy, Film, Art, Literature," Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge, April 15-16, 2011.

This conference focuses on metafiction, taken to cover any fiction which represents itself as a fiction.

Confirmed speakers include:

- Mark Currie(School of English and Drama, Queen Mary, University of London)
- Ruth Ronen (Department of Philosophy and Culture Research, University of Tel Aviv)
- Murray Smith (Department of Film Studies, University of Kent)
- Kendall Walton (Department of Philosophy, University of Michigan)
- Patricia Waugh (Department of English Studies, University of Durham)

Possible topics include:

- How to accommodate metafictions within an account of truth in fiction
- Audience engagement with metafictional representations
- Metafictional narrative techniques
- Metafiction in literature, film or the visual arts
- Whether metafictions place constraints on the ontology of fiction and the nature of fictional objects.

For further details and registration, please see the conference homepage: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/1446/.

Pub: JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS AND ART CRITICISM 67.1 (2009).

Contents: ARTICLES

• Introduction (p 1-3) by NOËL CARROLL Abstract Full Text: HTML, PDF (Size: 64K) Save Article

I. NARRATIVE AND METAPHYSICS

• "Story Identity and Story Type" (p 5-13) by AARON SMUTS Abstract Full Text: HTML, PDF (Size: 116K) Save Article
• "Imagining De Re and the Symmetry Thesis of Narration" (p 15-24) by NICHOLAS DIEHL Abstract Full Text: HTML, PDF (Size: 122K) Save Article

II. NARRATIVE AND EPISTEMOLOGY

• "Narrativity and Knowledge" (p 25-36) by PAISLEY LIVINGSTON Abstract Full Text: HTML, PDF (Size: 138K) Save Article
• "Counterfactual Narrative Explanation" (p 37-47) by DANIEL DOHRN Abstract Full Text: HTML, PDF (Size: 130K) Save Article
• "Understanding Narratives and Narrative Understanding" (p 49-59) by ISMAY BARWELL Abstract Full Text: HTML, PDF (Size: 124K) Save Article

III. NARRATIVE AND CHARACTER

• "Narrative and the Psychology of Character" (p 61-71) by GREGORY CURRIE Abstract Full Text: HTML, PDF (Size: 134K) Save Article
• "Virtual People: Fictional Characters through the Frames of Reality" (p 73-82) by IRA NEWMAN Abstract Full Text: HTML, PDF (Size: 121K) Save Article

IV. NARRATIVE AND THE EMOTIONS

• "In Sympathy with Narrative Characters" (p 83-95) by ALESSANDRO GIOVANNELLI Abstract Full Text: HTML, PDF (Size: 146K) Save Article
• "Narrative Thinking, Emotion, and Planning" (p 97-106) by PETER GOLDIE Abstract Full Text: HTML, PDF (Size: 123K) Save Article

V. NARRATIVE ART FORMS

• "Narrative in Comics" (p 107-117) by HENRY JOHN PRATT Abstract Full Text: HTML, PDF (Size: 133K) Save Article
• "Narrative Pictures" (p 119-129) by BENCE NANAY Abstract Full Text: HTML, PDF (Size: 124K) Save Article

Visit the journal homepage here: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120083102/home.

Feeney, Dennis. "Review of I. J. F. de Jong, et al., eds. TIME IN ANCIENT GREEK LITERATURE." BMCR (July 2008).

de Jong, I. J. F., and R. Nuenlist, eds. Time in Ancient Greek Literature: Studies in Ancient Greek Narrative. 2 Vols. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Readers should be advised that the focus is rigorously narratological, so that the title is somewhat misleading: instead of Time in Ancient Greek Literature we might have had Some Results of Applying Narratological Analysis to Ancient Greek Literature. In their Epilogue the editors justify this particular narratological emphasis and make it perfectly plain that there are other approaches to the vast topic of time in narrative texts, such as the "philosophical-historical approach", or "through linguistics" (522). Their own aim has been to enlist contributors who can analyse a wide range of Greek texts through this particular lens, hoping especially to have a diachronic dimension which will throw variations over time and genre into relief (ix): in fact, the main overall conclusion is that "most narratological categories are not bound by genre: the same devices occur in different genres, and genres are not homogeneous where the use of narrative devices is concerned" (522). The risk remains, however, of seeing narratology as an end in itself. Too many of the papers in this volume end up appearing to have a virtually parochial interest in the categories of narratology per se, in a way that makes it hard to keep an eye on the larger picture that such analysis is meant to be elucidating. I kept thinking of the wonderful scene in the movie Shakespeare in Love when the actors have adjourned to the local pub after rehearsing Romeo and Juliet, and the actor playing the nurse is downing a pint as a friend asks him what this new play is all about: with the perspective of the true actor, he replies, "Well, there's this nurse..." I do not mean at all to decry the use of the analytical techniques or terminology of narratology, which can produce extraordinary interpretative results. In the case of Jean Genette, the pater narratologiae, his evolution of terminology in Discours du récit was continually in dialogue with the text of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu, and the new forms of analysis he produced kept generating deep insights into the novel's core themes and concerns. Again, the point is simply that narratology is not an end in itself. There is a certain interest and utility in having it demonstrated in the case of all kinds of texts that they can be analysed in terms of analepsis and so on, but this demonstration would ideally be the beginning of criticism, not the end. The chapters in this book that really sing are the ones in which narratology is regarded as a tool instead of a goal; in these cases one suddenly sees how much light can be shed in unexpected places by the careful consideration of technique. Space forbids discussion of all the chapters, although they may all be recommended for anyone working on the authors in question, since they all succeed in demonstrating that narratological time-analysis has traction in each instance; I shall concentrate on some cases where the narratology seems to be more of a goal, and on some cases where it seems to be more of a tool. . . . Read the rest here: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2008/2008-07-24.html.

CFP: "Stories of the Novel: a Workshop on Ancient and Modern Narrative Fiction," University of Bristol, March 8, 2008.

Sponsored by the Classical Reception Studies Network and the Institute of Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition at the University of Bristol Confirmed Keynote Speaker: Dr Robert Carver, University of Durham One of the most persistent 'stories of the novel' tells us that the genre appeared in the eighteenth century, and is inextricably bound up with the modes of thought and social formations of European modernity. Ian Watt's account of the Rise of the Novel, which suggests that the novel emerged in response to the needs of an expanding middle class, is still broadly accepted. Watt argues that the rise of the novel represents a decisive break with classical literature, one of many oppositions by which the genre is defined. It has also been famously been theorized by Bakhtin in opposition to the epic. The stories told about the novel have thus also been stories about the difference between 'the ancient' and 'the modern'. This one-day workshop aims to rethink the modernity of the novel in all senses of that term. Through short presentations, round-table discussion, and keynote responses, we seek to open up new dialogues between ancient and modern and to create new ways of theorizing the relationship between historical context and narrative form. How do considerations of the ancient novel disturb the modernizing ambitions of arguments like Bakhtin's? Do analyses of the modern or contemporary novel shed any light on the study of the ancient novel? How can historical periodization inform or hinder the study of a genre or form?

We welcome proposals for fifteen-minute presentations in the form of 150-word abstracts to ika.willis@bristol.ac.uk or h.c..j.power@exeter.ac.uk, by 15 January 2008. Proposals from postgraduate students are welcome. Dr Ika Willis, Lecturer in Reception: Ika.Willis@bristol.ac.uk