"Literary allusion", seminar at ALSCW 2010 (4-7 Nov; proposals due 1 Aug.)
Seminar: "Literary Allusion"
To be convened by Joseph Pucci and Hannibal Hamlin at the ALSCW's 2010 meeting, 4-7 November, on the campus of Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey.
Participants must be members of the ALSCW and registered for the conference before attending (see link below). Short papers will be circulated among all participants two weeks before the seminar. The papers should expressly, specifically examine practices of allusion or the explanation of allusions. Textual examples may represent any genre, region, period, tradition, or literary movement. Yet the discussion of such examples ideally should be informed by explicit theoretical reflection, on such questions as:
• What are allusions?
• What factors determine how allusions are received and understood?
• What can and should be made (or cannot and should not be) of inferences and assertions concerning a writer's allusive intent?
• Is allusion is more fruitfully placed among poetic figures (for example, some have analyzed it as a kind of metaphor) or among metapoetic performative gestures?
• Why might a given allusion seem so significant to some people who love a text, yet so negligible to others?
For more on ALSCW and its 2010 meeting, see: