LLCL Seminar: Letters as source and absence: Reading Dorothy Richardson’s Letters as Life Writing
Dorothy Richardson was one of a select group of writers who changed the rules of prose fiction. She was the first writer about whose work the description ‘stream of consciousness’ was used. With James Joyce in Ireland, Marcel Proust in France, William Faulkner in the United States, and Virginia Woolf in England, Richardson invented a new form of writing. She can claim, with Proust and Joyce, to have been at the forefront of a revolution in literature. Richardson was a prominent figure in the 1920s, but her contribution to twentieth-century literature faded from view in the years after the Second World War, returning thanks to the work of feminist scholars in the 1970s. Funded by an AHRC Major Award, and published by Oxford University Press, the publication of scholarly editions of her Pilgrimage series and shorter fiction, alongside the first multi-volume Collected Letters, will confirm her place amongst her contemporaries and fill a significant gap in literary history. In this seminar, series editors Scott McCracken and Jo Winning will examine the complex relationship between modernist experimentation, autofictional practice and epistolary materials.
Scott McCracken is Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature in the School of English & Drama at Queen Mary University, London. He has published widely within modernist critical studies. In addition to his work on the Dorothy Richardson Scholarly Editions Project, he is currently completing a monograph, which rethinks the twentieth century from the perspective of political defeat: Thinking Through Defeat: Literary Responses to Political Failure from the Paris Commune to the Berlin Wall.
Jo Winning is Professor of Modern Literature & Critical Theory, and Head of the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics in the Faculty of Arts at Monash.
Event Details
- Date:
- 12 November 2024 at 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
- Venue:
- Japanese Studies Center, 12 Ancora Imparo Way, Clayton Campus
- Campus:
- Clayton
- Open to:
- By registration
- Categories:
- School of Languages Literatures Cultures and Linguistics
Description
Dorothy Richardson was one of a select group of writers who changed the rules of prose fiction. She was the first writer about whose work the description ‘stream of consciousness’ was used. With James Joyce in Ireland, Marcel Proust in France, William Faulkner in the United States, and Virginia Woolf in England, Richardson invented a new form of writing. She can claim, with Proust and Joyce, to have been at the forefront of a revolution in literature. Richardson was a prominent figure in the 1920s, but her contribution to twentieth-century literature faded from view in the years after the Second World War, returning thanks to the work of feminist scholars in the 1970s. Funded by an AHRC Major Award, and published by Oxford University Press, the publication of scholarly editions of her Pilgrimage series and shorter fiction, alongside the first multi-volume Collected Letters, will confirm her place amongst her contemporaries and fill a significant gap in literary history. In this seminar, series editors Scott McCracken and Jo Winning will examine the complex relationship between modernist experimentation, autofictional practice and epistolary materials.
Scott McCracken is Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature in the School of English & Drama at Queen Mary University, London. He has published widely within modernist critical studies. In addition to his work on the Dorothy Richardson Scholarly Editions Project, he is currently completing a monograph, which rethinks the twentieth century from the perspective of political defeat: Thinking Through Defeat: Literary Responses to Political Failure from the Paris Commune to the Berlin Wall.
Jo Winning is Professor of Modern Literature & Critical Theory, and Head of the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics in the Faculty of Arts at Monash.