Narrative Concepts in the Study of Eighteenth-Century
Literature
Colloquium at the University of Turku, 18 -19 January 2013
Lecture Hall Janus, Sirkkala Campus
The emphasis on the historical variability of literature has forced scholars to a reconsideration of the nature of
the concepts of narrative study. The objective of the colloquium “Narrative Concepts in the Study of
Eighteenth-Century Literature” is to reflect upon the origin and use of narrative concepts in the analysis of the
narrative literature(s) of the eighteenth century. The colloquium offers a forum for reflection upon how the
common concepts of narrative study - such as characterization, narrator, point of view/focalization, plot, story,
time, place - are accommodated when used in the analysis of eighteenth-century literature. Are the concepts
general, and is the historical specificity of a literary phenomenon grasped simply by choosing the right
concepts from the repertoire of general, ahistorical concepts, or do the concepts themselves need to undergo
essential modifications depending on the literary historical phenomenon, or even be created on the basis of
observing the specific features of the phenomenon?
The colloquium is organized by Finnish Academy project Literature and Time and Turku Centre for Medieval and
Early Modern Studies.
Friday 18 January
9.00 Welcome: Liisa Steinby
9.15 Michael McKeon (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey): The Eighteenth-Century Challenge to
Narrative Theory
10.30 Coffee
11.00 - 12.45
John Richetti (University of Pennsylvania): Formalism and Historicity Reconciled in the Novel: The Function of
Minor Characters in Tom Jones
Claudia Nitschke (Durham University): Metalepsis and Fictionality in the 18th Century
Pat Rogers (University of South Florida): The Uses of Paratext in Popular Eighteenth-Century Biography: The
Case of Edmund Curll
12.45 Lunch
14.00 - 15.10
Dorothee Birke (University of Freiburg): Authority and the ‘Authorial Narrator’ in the Eighteenth-Century
English Novel
Rosamaria Loretelli (University of Naples): Silent Reading, the Advent of the Novel and the Narratological
Category of Retardation
15.10 Coffee
15.30 - 16.45 Monika Fludernik (University of Freiburg): Space in the Eighteenth-Century Novel: Plotting
Spatiality and Description
Saturday 19 January
9.15 - 10.30
Stuart Sherman (Fordham University): The Play of Pulse and Sprawl: Rhythms of Reading in the Newspaper
and the Novel
Kathrin Pöge-Alder (University of Jena): The Grimm-Tale and the Long Lasting Eighteenth-Century Literature
10.30 Coffee
11.00 Paul J. Hunter (University of Chicago): “Having no more Ink…” Robinson Crusoe and the Problem of
Inadequate Narrative Models
12.15 Lunch
13.30 - 15.15
Karin Kukkonen (University of Oxford): Probability in Charlotte Lennox’ The Female Quixote
Christine Waldschmidt (University of Mainz): The Rhetoric Value of Narrative Plot: Example as a Narrative
Structure in Enlightenment Literature
Penny Pritchard (University of Hertfordshire): ‘Speaking Well of the Dead’: Characterisation and Typology in
Eighteenth-Century English Funeral Sermons
15.15 Coffee
15.45 - 17.00
Liisa Steinby (University of Turku): Perception and Time: Forms of Empiricism in the Eighteenth-Century
Novel
Aino Mäkikalli (University of Turku): Time as a Narrative Concept in Early Eighteenth-Century Novels
17.00 Concluding discussion