EAAS INFO: Call for papers/Gaddis conference (fwd)

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

Spotted this on the way to the country (probably will skip 
that ol' boozing-saunaing-lakeplummeting rat race this year).

Heikki (or, for the p-list oldtimers, just mr hankeyhankey)  

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 07 Jul 1999 08:47:56 +0200
From: Jaap Verheul <Jaap.Verheul at let.uu.nl>
To: eaas-l at let.uu.nl
Subject: EAAS INFO: Call for papers/Gaddis conference

>Date: Wed, 07 Jul 1999 00:11:46 +0200
>Subject: Call for papers/Gaddis conference
>From: "Brigitte F=?ISO-8859-1?B?6Q==?=lix" <bfelix at univ-lemans.fr>

CALL FOR PAPERS
CALL FOR PAPERS
"READING WILLIAM GADDIS"
24-25 MARCH 2000
LOLitA/UNIVERSITÉ D'ORLÉANS, FRANCE


For the first time in France, a colloquium will be dedicated to the work of
William Gaddis, who died on December 16, 1998. The ³Laboratoire
Orléans-Tours de Littérature Américaine² (LOLitA) organizes an international
conference entitled ³Reading William Gaddis/Lire William Gaddis² at the
University of Orléans, March 24-25 2000. Also intended as an homage to the
author of The Recognitions, JR, Carpenter's Gothic and A Frolic of His Own,
this conference will try to assess the situation of William Gaddis's work in
the field of contemporary American literature. Participants will be invited
to share and confront their reading(s) of William Gaddis's novels as part of
LOLitA's ongoing reflection on the modes (and attached theories) of reading
contemporary fiction. 
Here is a non-exhaustive list of issues to be addressed: 
Critical reception: what is the place of Gaddis's work in contemporary
fiction? What types of critical readings have been made so far? How can the
experience of reading The Recognitions, JR, Carpenter's Gothic and A Frolic
of His Own be defined? What is it that we read exactly when we read William
Gaddis? How does or can one read such a text as JR? How is the act of
reading at stake in the four novels (for instance, how does the reading
oscillate between constraints and the temptation to drift along?) What are
the pleasures of reading? 
To read and reread is to experience the singularity of Gaddis's writing, so
what links can be established between the reading of Gaddis's novels and
their respective aesthetics and poetics? With Gaddis, a certain ³ethics² of
reading (he wished his readers would accept to make a little ³effort²) seems
to lead to an aesthetics of reading (only certain kinds of attentive
readings can render the form of the text truly visible). Could this in turn
lead to a poetics of reading that would somehow be in keeping with Gaddis's
writing but also more generally contribute to delineating a poetics of
reading contemporary fiction?

Papers will be in English; their presentation should not exceed 25 minutes
(about 8 to 10 pages, or 12000 to 15000 signs).
Paper proposals deadline: 15 November 1999. Please send a one-page abstract
by post or e-mail to the conference coordinator: Brigitte Félix, 74 rue
Édouard de la Boussinière, 72000 Le Mans, France, Phone 33-(0) 243231239
(bfelix at univ-lemans.fr).