Wednesday 23 January: Adam Guy (Lincoln College) and James McFarthing (University of Bristol)

Joint Session
Fitzjames II, Merton
17:00 - 18:30
Drinks and nibbles provided

Adam Guy (Lincoln College)
Robbe-Grillet in space: Brian W. Aldiss’s sf nouveau roman

Abstract

In 1962, Brian W. Aldiss – an established British science fiction (sf) author – had a manuscript rejected by his publisher. At this point titled Garden with Figures, or Figures in a Garden, Aldiss’s novel is a conspicuous imitation of the early novels of Alain Robbe-Grillet, at this point in Britain the exemplary figure of the contemporary international literary avant-garde. The novel was eventually published in 1968 – re-titled Report on Probability A and containing a recognisable generic apparatus to frame the original text. 

Using the Deleuzo-Guattarian pairing of de-/reterritorialisation, my paper considers Aldiss’s engagement with Robbe-Grillet, and more broadly with the idea of the nouveau roman. Viewed in the context of Aldiss’s critical statements, as well as his place within the British Science Fiction New Wave, the novel’s adoption of Robbe-Grillet is a brave deterritorialisation of the hermetic and perceivedly middlebrow genre of sf into the currents of fiction that emerged in the wake of modernism. However, Aldiss’s eventual capitulation to a more recognisable version of sf seems to reterritorialise the genre to some extent. At the same time, another movement is taking place. If, in Report, the nouveau roman is deterritorialised into the exterior terrain of sf, then concurrently, Aldiss reterritorialises his influences by evoking the theoretical coordinates that Robbe-Grillet set up for the nouveau roman. The conventionally sf sections of Report in fact develop a metalanguage for the original Robbe-Grillet-inspired text, reflecting on it – as nouveau roman – on Robbe-Grillet’s terms.   

Adam is a second year DPhil student in the English Faculty. His thesis – supervised by Valentine Cunningham – will most probably be titled ‘The Nouveau Roman in Britain, 1957–73’.

James McFarthing (University of Bristol)The Science of Experience – A Jules Verne Aesthetic

Abstract

‘L’heure est venue où la science a sa place faite dans le domaine de la littérature’ 

Pierre Hetzel, L’avertissement de l’editeur in Jules Verne, Aventures du capitaine Hatteras p. 26. (1864)

The emergence of the roman scientifique in France saw the first great popularisation of the science fiction text and the emergence of a form that would go on to irrevocably shape our engagement with questions of industry, technology and social change. Distinguishing himself from the more didactic texts of scientific popularisation, Jules Verne set out to create a form that could combine the rationalistic scientific epistemology of the sciences with a novelistic aesthetic capable of communicating complex scientific theories and terminology through means of sensual evocation, adventure narrative and social critique. In his great novel cycle the Voyages extraordinaires, Verne helps to elevate scientific discourse from a mere bulwark of verisimilitude or abstract obfuscation to a sensual discourse that helps renegotiate the sensual reception of scientific phenomena in fiction whilst providing the necessary tools for effective artistic and social engagement with science and scientific practice.  

This paper intends to outline how the scientific principle is grounded within the aesthetic core of Verne’s writing, forming an epistemological and aesthetic foundation upon which Verne can build his stories and ideas. By examining the different scientific disciplines of cartography, geometry and geology used by Verne in his works, I will demonstrate how scientific theory and phenomena are reconfigured aesthetically and spatially, creating a new kind of ‘fictional empiricism’. This approach helps ground not only the epistemological and stylistic core of Verne’s Voyages extraordinaires, but also helps delineate the ways in which science fiction establishes itself both as a formal genre and as a critical mode of writing.   

James is a third-year PhD student at the University of Bristol, whose research centres on Jules Verne, utopian theory and science fiction. He previously read for an undergraduate degree in Philosophy and French at King’s College London where he also received a Master’s degree in French Literature and Culture. As of 2012 he lives and studies in Paris in his capacity as a ‘pensionnaire étranger’ at the École Normale Supérieure.