Recent Brontë Talks

Some Brontë-related talks in recent (or current) conferences

International Congress on Political, Economic and Social Studies
ICPESS 2017
May 19-22, 2017, International University of Sarajevo- Bosnia Herzegovina

The Eyre Affair as a Postmodern Parody of Jane Eyre
Merve Bekiryazıcı

Although being a term that has been used since the ancient times, parody has always been a controversial subject, and it has been defined by a good number of critics in different ways throughout the periods. While some critics see it as a low form of literature, some others have tried to raise it to a higher status, this time stripping it off from its humour which they considered to be dragging parody down. This paper will examine the main controversies over the term, referring to leading critics’ views on the subject and then will analyse The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde in this sense. It aims to show how Fforde’s book can be read as a postmodern parody and how it carries the main characteristics of postmodernism and parody alike.

BASEES 2017
British Association of Slavonic and East European Studies
31 March – 2 April 2017
Fitzwilliam College – Churchill College, University of Cambridge

Russian Jane Eyre: Zhenskaya istoria (A Story of a Woman) by U. Zhadovskaya and Feminine Bildungsroman in Russian Literature of 1860s
Natalya Sarana
National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow

The novel by U. Zhadovskaya, Zhenskaya istoria, was published in 1861. By the time the novel came
out, Zhadovskaya had already been famed for her poems and her first and well-reviewed novel Far from the big society (1857). The plot of Zhenskaya istoria is centered on a young girl Lisa, who is trying to find her calling and her place in the provincial life of her distant relatives. As the story develops, Lisa goes through all the stages of hero’s growth inherent to a Bildungsroman character.
In my paper I will analyze Zhenskaya istoria as a text crucial to the study of feminine Bildungsroman
in Russian literary history of 1860s and written in a deliberate dialogue with Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.
Jane Eyre is thought to represent an example of a feminine Bildungsroman in British literature of
1840s and the key text on “the woman question” with its main topic lying in the search of not a perfect marriage, but of new experience. Accordingly, Lisa, Jane’s Russian ‘sister’, feels that she is tired of her colorless life and dependence on others. Moreover, Russian text adopts resembling metaphors as found in Jane Eyre. Zhadovskaya not only inherits the tradition of British feminine Bildungsroman, she also inscribes it in the discussion of “the woman question”, one of the topic questions in Russian society of 1860s.

International Society for the Study of narrative
2017 Narrative Conference
Lexington, Kentucky
March 23-26, 2017
“Labor Disputes and Narrative Time in Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley”—Deirdre Mikolajcik, University of Kentucky

Panel: “Amen: even so come, Lord Jesus!”: 3 Readings of St. John Rivers’ Words and the Enigmatic Ending of Jane EyreChair: George Butte
“‘Amen: even so come, Lord Jesus!’: Whose Words, Whose Consciousness, and a Phenomenology of Irony”—George Butte,
Colorado College
“The Angel of the Abyss: Why St. John does not actually have the last word in Jane Eyre”—Rashna Singh, Colorado College

“The Other(ing) World of Wuthering Heights—Shannon Dryden, University of Idaho