{"id":1169,"date":"2016-05-02T17:31:47","date_gmt":"2016-05-02T17:31:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=1169"},"modified":"2016-05-03T21:01:13","modified_gmt":"2016-05-03T21:01:13","slug":"conference-report-authorship-and-appropriation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=1169","title":{"rendered":"Conference Report: Authorship and Appropriation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many thanks to James Morris, who has recently submitted his PhD at the University of Glasgow, for the following report on the Authorship and Appropriation conference that took place in Dundee last month.<\/em><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Hosted by the Centre for Critical and Creative Cultures<\/a> at the University of Dundee, the Authorship and Appropriation Conference<\/a> was held on 8th<\/sup> and 9th<\/sup> of April 2016 and was organised by Dr Daniel Cook<\/a>.\u00a0 A packed schedule of 19 panels, two plenary lectures and a plenary roundtable made for an engaging, inspiring and lively conference which was defined by a warm and convivial atmosphere.\u00a0 Seeking to create scholarly networks based upon the study of the \u2018afterlives\u2019 of artistic cultural productions, the Authorship and Appropriation Conference covered a broad range of themes including plagiarism and parody, filmic and operatic appropriations of literary texts, and the theories practices of editing and collaboration.<\/p>\n

After a welcoming note from Dr Daniel Cook and the Centre\u2019s director, Professor Mark Robson, the conference began with three parallel sessions.\u00a0 Luckily enough for me, my panel, \u2018Appropriation and Identity\u2019, was up in the first slot.\u00a0 It is a testament to the decentred and innovative approach to the conference themes that my paper, \u2018Orientalist Plagiarism, Protofeminism and the Appropriation of Genre in Phebe Gibbes\u2019 Hartly House, Calcutta<\/em> (1789)\u2019 was paired with Ruth Menzies\u2019 (Aix-Marseille Universit\u00e9) \u2018Appropriation and Identity in Natasha Soobramanien\u2019s Genie and Paul<\/em>\u2019.\u00a0 Both engaged with eighteenth-century literature: my paper explored Gibbes\u2019 extension of the sentimental novel, while Menzies accounted for Soobramanien\u2019s contemporary reworking and appropriation of Bernadin de Saint-Pierre\u2019s 1788 romance, Paul et Virginie<\/em>.\u00a0 Considering the ways that literary models and narratives are appropriated to address diverse issues including national and gendered identities, both papers examined authorial manipulations of plot and form in their analysis of the conference themes.<\/p>\n

The second panel I attended, \u2018Gulliveriana\u2019, was organised according to a similarly decentred understanding of authorship and appropriation.\u00a0 Alice Colombo (NUI Galway) provided an engaging discussion of the reception and popularity of Jonathan Swift\u2019s Gulliver\u2019s Travels <\/em>(1726) in nineteenth-century Italy.\u00a0 Exploring the ways in which paratextual elements of the work, including Walter Scott\u2019s 1814 preface, as well as J.J. Grandville\u2019s illustrations, impacted upon the reception of Swift in Italy, Colombo\u2019s paper, \u2018The popularity and popularisation of Gulliver\u2019s Travel\u2019s in nineteenth-century Italy: a paratextual perspective\u2019, provided an important discussion of the transnationalisation of Swift\u2019s eighteenth-century satire.\u00a0 R\u00e9ka Major (E\u00f6tv\u00f6s University) offered an equally insightful reading of the intertextual allusions to Swift in A.S. Byatt\u2019s short story, \u2018Baglady\u2019 (1998).\u00a0 Using the dialogue between Swift\u2019s poetry and A.S. Byatt\u2019s prose fiction to examine the construction of gendered ideologies in modern society, Major\u2019s paper, \u2018Bleeding lipstick and flaking skin: Myths of the ageing woman in A.S. Byatt and Jonathan Swift\u2019, demonstrated the importance of looking to the past to help to define the present.<\/p>\n

After a brief coffee break delegates were invited to attend either the third parallel session of the day, or to a screening of David Lean\u2019s classic film adaptation of Great Expectations<\/em> (1946).\u00a0 Despite the lure of Martita Hunt\u2019s eerie Miss Havisham I attended the pre-fabricated session, \u2018Appropriation as Cultural Transmission in the Eighteenth-Century Periodical Press\u2019.\u00a0 Offered by researchers from the University of Kent\u2019s Leverhulme-funded Lady\u2019s Magazine <\/em>project<\/a>, this insightful panel untangled the knotted and diffuse history of \u2018appropriation\u2019 and reuse in the periodical publications of the late eighteenth century.\u00a0 Careful to never use the word plagiarism, Jenny DiPlacidi, Kim Simpson and Koenraad Claes provided their audience with an entertaining view into their complex work on the republication of poetry and prose in the latter decades of the eighteenth century.\u00a0 Jenny DiPlacidi\u2019s, \u2018\u201cFull of pretty stories\u201d: Literary Afterlives in the First Series of the Lady\u2019s Magazine<\/em>\u2019 traced the appearance and reuse of Gothic conventions in the late eighteenth century press.\u00a0 Expanding the parameters of the female Gothic, DiPlacidi\u2019s paper demonstrated the long history of tropes regularly credited to Anne Radcliffe.\u00a0 Kim Simpson\u2019s presentation, \u2018Anomalous and Anonymous: Locating Links and Chasing Tales in Amatory Fiction and Beyond\u2019 offered a compelling reinvestigation of the links between amatory fiction and the periodical press.\u00a0 Simpson\u2019s original approach also allowed for an important mapping of the triangulation of influence between anonymous and attributed fictions.\u00a0 Koenraad Claes closed the panel with his paper, \u2018Poetics of appropriation: re-occasioned occasional verse in the Lady\u2019s Magazine<\/em>\u2019.\u00a0 Short lyric poems which recounted the poet\u2019s emotional response to specific events, the occasional verse submitted to the Lady\u2019s Magazine<\/em>, as Claes\u2019 presentation ably demonstrated, were often appropriations of earlier works.\u00a0 Considering notions of intellectual property in combination with subversions of emotional authenticity, Claes\u2019 paper offered an enlightening view into the circuits of appropriation in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century periodical.<\/p>\n

After the close of the first day\u2019s panel presentations came Professor Michael Burden\u2019s (New College, Oxford) plenary, \u2018Hijacking Virtue: Richardson\u2019s Pamela <\/em>and the rise of sentimental opera\u2019.\u00a0 Exploring operatic adaptations of Richardson\u2019s seminal novel, Burden\u2019s plenary offered a hugely informative view of the interconnectedness of operatic and literary traditions in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.\u00a0 Providing his audience with a detailed booklet of illustrations, Burden\u2019s plenary aptly represented the interdisciplinary ethos of the Authorship and Appropriation conference.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the conference dinner at a local restaurant, Dr Daniel Cook and Dr Nicholas Seager (Keele University) launched their edited collection, The Afterlives of Eighteenth Century Fiction<\/em>.\u00a0 Featuring essays from the plenary speakers at the Authorship and Appropriation conference, Cook\u2019s and Seager\u2019s volume also offers a host of other engaging essays which are representative of the burgeoning field of scholarship surrounding appropriation and adaptation.<\/p>\n

Despite conversations continuing well into the evening after the conference dinner, everyone was back at the Dalhousie Building bright and early on Saturday morning to hear Dr Nicholas Seager\u2019s entertaining plenary, \u2018 Tristram Shandy<\/em> Adapted and Appropriated: Michael Winterbottom\u2019s A Cock and Bull Story <\/em>and Martin Rowson\u2019s Graphic Novel\u2019.\u00a0 Offering insights into the afterlives of Sterne\u2019s innovative approach in contemporary film and fiction, Seager\u2019s engaging paper explored the \u2018metafilmic\u2019 and metafictional devices in modern appropriations of Tristram Shandy<\/em>.<\/p>\n

After the plenary, delegates broke-up for panel sessions.\u00a0 The first panel that I attended, \u2018Reframing Institutions\u2019, offered two excellent papers from Ania Grant (University of Auckland) and Wendy Fall (Marquette University).\u00a0 Unfortunately Ania Grant was unable to present her paper herself, but the panel chair, Laura Kirkley (University of Newcastle), kindly delivered Ania\u2019s fascinating paper entitled, \u2018Marrying Mr Collins: Marriage of Convenience from Pride and Prejudice<\/em> to Bridget Jones\u2019s Diary<\/em>\u2019.\u00a0 Amusing and insightful, Grant\u2019s paper explored film adaptations of Austen\u2019s texts and traced differing attitudes toward marriage as a financial institution in modern retellings of Pride and Prejudice<\/em>.\u00a0 Wendy Fall\u2019s presentation, \u2018Matthew Lewis: The Nationalist Plagiarist\u2019, was similarly informative.\u00a0 Charged by his critics as a plagiarist, Lewis\u2019s appropriations of French and German sources, as Fell pointed out, were used by the novelist in The Monk<\/em> (1796) to promote patriotic virtues in the face of Revolutionary upheaval in France.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Romanticism and the Early Modern\u2019 panel saw presentations from Andrew Farrow (University College, Cork) and John Lavagnino (King\u2019s College, London).\u00a0 Farrow\u2019s presentation, \u2018Blake\u2019s Chaucer: The Extent to Which William Blake\u2019s Mythological \u201cNation\u201d is Informed by His Perceptions of Chaucer in Medieval England\u2019, provided an original study of the influence of Chaucer on Blake\u2019s \u2018eternised\u2019 mythological system.\u00a0 John Lavagnino\u2019s paper, \u2018Lamb\u2019s Expurgation of Early Modern Drama\u2019, offered a comprehensive evaluation of the unintended outcomes of Charles Lamb\u2019s editorial practice. \u00a0Showing the ways in which Lamb\u2019s removal of \u2018indelicate\u2019 passages from Early Modern dramas actually promoted an interest in unbowdlerised editions, Lavagnino\u2019s paper provided a nuanced account of the influence of Early Modern drama in the Romantic period.<\/p>\n

Representative of the conference\u2019s aims to promote discussion across academic disciplines, the penultimate panel of the day, \u2018History\/Fiction\/ Film\u2019, covered a diverse range of themes from the vogue for Russian cinema in the 1920s, to postmodern appropriations of the eighteenth-century novel.\u00a0 In his paper, \u2018Complications of an afterlife: a work by Leo Tolstoy re-interpreted by later film-makers\u2019, Stuart Campbell (University of Glasgow) provided an informative account of the Hollywood-style films of Russian \u00e9migr\u00e9 film-makers in 1920s Germany.\u00a0 Developing considerations of filmic and operatic appropriations of literature, Campbell argued that films and operas should be measured by the criteria of their own genre rather than upon their proximity to their original source.\u00a0 By way of engaging contrast, Stewart Cooke\u2019s (McGill University) \u2018\u201cReceived Melodies\u201d: The New, Old Novel\u2019, explored the prevalence of appropriation in postmodern fiction.\u00a0 Discussing the works of a number of novelists including John Barth and John Fowles, Cooke\u2019s paper analysed postmodern appropriations of eighteenth century fictions and demonstrated the generative tension between the old and new in literary production.<\/p>\n

The final panel that I attended, \u2018Rewriting Scotland\u2019, was funded by the Centre for Scottish Culture at the University of Dundee.\u00a0 Katrin Berndt\u2019s (University of Bremen) paper, \u2018This Side of the Event Horizon:\u00a0 Metaphorical Appropriations of Science in the Writing of Pippa Goldschmidt\u2019 considered Goldschmidt\u2019s poetry and prose.\u00a0 Examining the Scottish writer\u2019s breaking of barriers between the artistic and the scientific, Berndt\u2019s paper offered a thought-provoking account of Goldschmidt\u2019s attempts to define the reciprocal exchange between literary forms and scientific knowledge.\u00a0 Appropriately for a conference held in Dundee, Erin Farley\u2019s paper, \u2018The Many Afterlives of William McGonagall\u2019, provided a lively and entertaining discussion of William McGonagall\u2019s place in popular culture after his death in 1902.\u00a0 A target for mockery in books, film and television, McGonagall has been the subject of a spoof \u00a0biopic, and has been immortalised as a character in The Muppets<\/em>.\u00a0 Showing how the \u2018idea\u2019 of McGonagall has come to define his place in popular culture, Farley\u2019s paper identified a process of \u2018reverse-appropriation\u2019 in which anonymous couplets and verse, which bear little resemblance to McGonagall\u2019s actual poetry, are regularly attributed to the poet in the popular imagination.<\/p>\n

In the closing plenary roundtable the conference organisers and plenary speakers discussed various routes for future collaboration, with a greater dialogue between studies of translation and appropriation being one of the many exciting ideas raised.\u00a0 As with all of the best conferences, however, the sheer number of excellent papers was both a joy and a frustration.\u00a0 Short of being able to be in two places at once, I picked panels based upon my own research interests and I am sure to have missed a number of exciting presentations across different sessions. Helpfully, the organisers at Dundee have set up a research network website, http:\/\/www.secondary-authorship.com\/<\/a>, where it is possible to read the abstracts of all delegates, and to become involved in the network.\u00a0 Judging by the lively dialogues at the conference, I am certain that there will be a number of exciting developments in the near future.\u00a0 Many thanks to Dr Daniel Cook and all the organisers at Dundee for making the Authorship and Appropriation Conference such an enjoyable and informative weekend.<\/p>\n

James M. Morris (University of Glasgow) <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many thanks to James Morris, who has recently submitted his PhD at the University of Glasgow, for the following report on the Authorship and Appropriation conference that took place in… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1169"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1186,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions\/1186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}