Tuesday 23rd November 2021, 5:15-6:30pm

Hovenden Room, All Souls College

Anna Glieden (Oriel) - History of Polemic? The ideal ‘homme de lettres’ Voltaire in Irailh’s Querelles littéraires (1761)

Even though the Querelles littéraires, ou Mémoires pour servir à l’Histoire des Révolutions de la République des Lettres, depuis Homère jusqu’à nos jours (1761) by the Abbé Augustin Simon Irailh is considered the first history of querelles littéraires that marked the Republic of Letters and is frequently referred to as such, it has rarely been looked at in greater detail. On closer examination, the historicity of this anthology must be questioned. On the one hand, Irailh’s anthology shows that an intellectual pursuit emerged decades earlier through querelles littéraires and has conditioned the ‘gens de lettres’ ever since and, thus, corresponds to the development of a ‘literary field’ such as Bourdieu defines it a century later. On the other hand, Irailh’s anthology is not a real historical narrative; it is above all a polemical writing that engages itself in querelles littéraires. Behind the veneer of a historical anthology of quarrels and in a time where Voltaire was well known for his querelles littéraires, Irailh not only legitimises the querelleur Voltaire, but even elevates him to a mythical figure, to the ideal ‘homme de lettres’ of a new ‘literary field’.

Harriet McKinley Smith (Jesus) - 'But O! He could not speak': the mute voice in Mary Robinson's 'The Savage of Aveyron

(This paper will be given via Zoom)

In 1800, the English Romantic poet Mary Robinson learned of a French feral child found living in the woods near Saint Sernin. The real-life boy’s discovery inspired her to write the ballad ‘The Savage of Aveyron’ and the poem raised several questions about the child’s rudimentary existence: who, or what, was he? How did he come to be in the woods? How can he communicate his story if he could not speak? The boy’s mutism is central to his characterisation within the poem, reflecting simultaneously his natural innocence, but also his experience of trauma; his mother is murdered by ‘ruffians three’ and he is then forced to live a solitary life in the woods. This paper examines how Robinson portrays the feral child’s identity to navigate the complex relationship between mutism and narrative voice.   

  

 Tuesday 9th November 2021, 5:15-6:30pm

Hovenden Room, All Souls College

Nicola Holt (Wolfson College) - What can literature do that philosophy can’t? Entering the hybrid worlds of Simone de Beauvoir and Iris Murdoch

The notion and value of literature has of course been contested ever since the days of Plato’s ‘ancient quarrel’ and his (very poetic) banishing of the poets. What makes literature distinct from philosophy? What can literature do that philosophy can’t? Why might a philosopher choose also to write literature? And who decides – whose quarrel is it anyway? My project approaches this ‘ancient quarrel’ through the specific lens of two hybrid ‘novelist-philosophers’ of the twentieth century: Simone de Beauvoir and Iris Murdoch. In this presentation, I shall begin to explore some of the key metaphors or fundamental symbols used by these two hybrid practitioners in their lectures and philosophical discourse to convey their own thinking on the nature of literature. What do these metaphors tell us about their conception of literature as an art form?

Tristan Alonge (Université de la Réunion; Maison Française d'Oxford) - Les origins grecques de la tragédie française : une occasion manquée / The Greek origins of French Tragedy: a missed opportunity

(This paper will be presented in French with questions in English and French)

Despite a promising start, the return of Greek tragedy to France abruptly faded from 1550, leaving the way open for Seneca as the only ancient model in the birth and development of French tragedy. How to justify the astonishing silence which separates the first translations of Sophocles and Euripides, under François I^er, from the success of Racine’s Phèdre in 1677? The explanation sketched out by Alonge’s recent book (Paris, Hermann, Nov. 2021) decompartmentalizes the fields of research to show that the fluctuating interest in Athenian theatre stems from extra-literary preferences: behind the passion for Greek hides another, unavowable passion for the reading of the Bible in the original language. A dangerous passion that the Council of Trent was quick to erase for more than a century, thus delaying the outbreak of a French tragedy inspired by Athenian models. The story of a missed opportunity.