University of Wolverhampton (UoW), UK, CTTR
University of Veliko Turnovo (UVT), Bulgaria, Department of British Studies
Université de Versailles-St Quentin en Yvelines (UVSQ), France, Centre for Arctic Studies
Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM), Spain, Research Group ‘Contextos literarios de la modernidad’
The symposium will explore the theme of decline in literature and culture from the eighteenth century to the present day, including: theories of decline, types of decline, change, forgetting rather than remembering, decadence rather than regeneration, pessimism, unpopularity rather than popularity. Concepts considered will include decline, decay, decadence, disappearance, dissolution, dissolving, destitution, defeat, disillusion, fading, forgetting, folding, finality; capitulation.
Professor Jan Borm, UVSQ (France): Proust, Joyce, and Musil, or Modernism Warming to the Theme of Decline
Maxime Briand, UVSQ (France): The Old North on the Wane: Pastoral Dissolution in Wordsworth's Writings
Dr Benjamin Colbert, UoW (UK): Romantic Palingenesis, or, History from the Ashes
Professor Juan Luis Conde, UCM (Spain): Crisis: Compression and Comprehension
Dr Glyn Hambrook, UoW (UK): The Twilight of the Idle: A Blueprint for the Elimination of Literature Written by Humans, in Rafael de Zamora’s ‘Máquina cerebral’ (1906)
Dr Ludmilla Kostova, UVT (Bulgaria): Countering the Threat of Historical Decline: the Case of Bram Stoker’s The Lady of the Shroud (1908)
Professor Dámaso López García, UCM (Spain): From Empire to Middle-Class Decorum: the Poetry of Philip Larkin
Dr Anna Katharina Schaffner, University of Kent (UK): ‘Degenerate’ Sexualities: On the Theorization of the Perversions in Nineteenth-Century Sexology
Professor Brenda Tooley, Monmouth College (USA): Decline and Degeneration in Alexander Pope’s Dunciad
Petya Tsoneva, UVT (Bulgaria): The Crumbling House, the Exploding Planet, the Invading Desert: Topoi of Decay in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Viktoriya Zaevska, UVT (Bulgaria): De-humanising Reality: the Paradigm of Roguery and the Distortion of the Orderly System of Beliefs in Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller
The registration fee is £25 / £17 (postgraduates). Payment details may be found on the registration form.
Follow these links for abstracts, programme, maps and directions for City Campus, and accommodation in Wolverhampton.
For any other queries, please contact Dr Glyn Hambrook (G.Hambrook@wlv.ac.uk) or Dr Benjamin Colbert (B.Colbert@wlv.ac.uk).
