Dividing the Novel: A Symposium

Old Arts Room 209
The University of Melbourne, Parkville Campus
Tuesday 10 December, 10am – 4:30pm

In the Poetics, Aristotle distinguished the “quantitative” parts of tragedy from the “qualitative.” The qualitative parts pertained to the essence of the form: having a complete plot, certain kinds of characters, specific uses of language, and so on. The quantitative parts, by contrast, pertained the protocols of segmentation: the separation of acts, for instance. At two removes from essence, however, they received almost no discussion. A lot has happened since the Poetics, but literary historiography still hasn't gotten around to thinking about quantitative division. As a result, basic questions remain unanswered: What exactly is a chapter? A scene? A fitt? Certain periods of literary history, moreover, seem to involve rapid transformations in the partitioning of forms. What is happening at these moments and why do they require a re-division of forms of storytelling?

The aim of this symposium is to bring together scholars working on these questions across a broad historical and geographical range. From the narrative structures of Chinese folk tales to sixteenth-century Italian reverberations of Ariosto, from the segmentations of English medieval poetry through to the mutations of the early French and British novel, this symposium will explore the historical meaning of these divisions.

Dividing the Novel will feature papers from Nicholas Paige (UC Berkeley), Amelia Dale (ANU), Anne McLaren (University of Melbourne), Stephanie Trigg (University of Melbourne), Laura Di Blasi (University of Melbourne), Joshua Barnes (University of Melbourne) and Joe Hughes (University of Melbourne).

All welcome, but if you wish to attend please RSVP by emailing Joe Hughes or Josh Barnes.

Supported by the Sutton Fund and the School of Culture and Communication.