Call for Papers

The Call for Papers has now closed.

For those who have had proposals accepted, a full version of your paper should be submitted by Friday 15 February, 2008.

Please submit papers to:
Ms Johanna Simmons
jsimmons@unimelb.edu.au

 

Political truth in the 20th Century was often monopolized by the holders of power. Artists who opposed this monopoly faced real life dangers such as being censored, condemned, imprisoned, or killed. In some societies any open opposition would be crushed; the victors of ethnic struggles would silence the losers; white colonists would oppress the native populations; women would be suppressed because of their gender; state or church powers would not allow their moral and belief systems to be questioned. The stranglehold on truth was often maintained by a censorship agency of some kind.

Authors, storytellers and other artists sought refuge in the realm of the Aesopic.  They extended Aesop’s method of disguising truth in fable, making use of traditional genres and narratological structures found in folklore, fairy tale, fable, and myth, to veil their critical ideas and present them in a form that would circumvent repercussions.

This conference sets out to examine how Aesopic writing is a world-wide phenomenon in 20th Century literature, with prominent examples spanning five continents.

Key areas are:

  1. Indigenous populations living in colonial and postcolonial nations, including Indigenous peoples in Australia and the South Pacific regions, North America, and the African continent;
  2. Women in extreme patriarchal societies in Asia and Africa;
  3. Totalitarian regimes in Asia and Europe;
  4. Fascist dictatorships in Western Europe;
  5. Military dictatorships in the Middle East and Latin America.

We suggest that papers be linked to one or more of the following topics:

  • The universality and diversity of the Aesopic (universal mechanisms of Aesopic writing; examples of Aesopic writing on five continents);
  • The application of theory to the Aesopic (eg.: Foucault on power; Baudrillard on simulation; Judith Butler on gender; Bhabha on ambivalence and ambiguity in postcolonialism; Propp on the morphology of the folk tale);
  • The narratology of the Aesopic (creation modes of a new discourse by means of Aesopic writing; the presence of reality in Aesopic texts as a subtext; the relation of narrated and narration in Aesopic texts);
  • The reflection of reality in the Aesopic (the relation of Aesopic texts to the writer's culture and its self-definition; the reflection of colonialism and its aftermath; the depiction of communism and its aftermath in Aesopic writing);
  • The impact of the Aesopic (reception of Aesopic texts; their treatment by the censors; the reaction of the holders of powers, the readers' modes of (re-)cognition).

Conference publications

Select papers of the conference will be published into a book.  We are currently in correspondence with publishers Peter Lang, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, and others.

  

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