CONFERENCE: Novel Beginnings: Transnational Perspectives on Early Modern Fiction
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University of Huelva, Spain
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NOVEL BEGINNINGS:
TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON EARLY MODERN FICTION
14-16 September, 2022
University of Huelva, Spain
Though the origins of the novel in English have been reinstated as an object of academic concern in the last thirty years, tackled from the interrelated approaches of history (Michael McKeon, The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740; Paul Hunter, Before Novels; Lennard Davis, Factual Fictions), genre (Josephine Donovan, Women and the Rise of the Novel) and gender (Janet Todd, The Sign of Angellica; Ros Ballaster, Seductive Forms), other more recent critical works have engaged with the transnational nature of early modern fiction, situating its inception and development in the context of other national forms and traditions (Margaret Anne Doody, The True History of the Novel; Ros Ballaster, Fabulous Orients; Srinivas Aravamudan, Enlightenment Orientalism). With the purpose of reconstructing and interpreting the early days of English prose fiction, we seek to explore its transnational context, attending to the ancient, Eastern and European sources that contributed to its configuration and expansion till the early eighteenth century.