Joint conference organised by PRISMES (CREA XVIII, Epistémè), Sorbonne nouvelle, and CIERL, Quebec
Paris, Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3, 11-12 December, 2010
Call for papers
This conference will examine the representation of history in travel
narrative. A European's perception of countries and peoples with no «history » is not the same as that of « civilised » nations. What model of
historical change do travel narratives project?history as a decline from
some mythical or mythicised origin, cyclical history, history as the
unfolding of a providential design, as progress ? The evolution of those
categories over the period considered will be investigated ; this period
stretches from 1589, which saw the publication of Richard Hakluyt's
Principal Navigations, to 1826, when William Ellis's Narrative of a Tour
through Hawaii came out.
What is the influence of historiography at any given time on the
representation of history as experience in travel literature ? How does
travel narrative validate its status as historiography ?
>From a more anthropological viewpoint, does the discovery of new or
different spaces or places shape the perception and construction of time
? Is there any interaction between the conception of space and that of
time, between the depiction of spaces and that of time, especially of the
time needed for the evolution of manners, customs and institutions which
differ from those familiar to the traveller ? Does this entail a
relativisation of time ? How does a European (or Europeanised) nation?s
past constrain the analysis of the fabric and customs of the areas
visited ? Is the historicisation of lived experience limited ? What is
the impact of measuring instruments on this experience and the account
thereof.
Those are some of the questions which will be addressed in this conference.
Voyages from and to Great-Britain will be of particular, but not
exclusive, interest.
Please send proposals?200-250 words for papers not exceeding 30 minutes
before 15 June 2010 to Isabelle Bour (Isabelle.Bour@univ-paris3.fr), Line
Cottegnies (Line.Cottegnies@univ-paris3.fr) and Thierry Belleguic
(Thierry.Belleguic@lit.ulaval.ca).
L. Cottegnies
Professor
Institut du Monde anglophone
Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3
