Adventure: Violence and Narrative Form, München (19.01. – 21.01.2023)

Annual Conference of the DFG Research Unit “Philology of Adventure”

19/20/21 January 2023, Literaturhaus München, Salvatorplatz 1, Munich

Adventure involves both the fascination of exerting and the fear of suffering violence. Situations of attack and defence or of flight and pursuit are central to most plotlines in adventurous storytelling. At least one of the historical roots of this conception of adventure, the medieval courtly narrative, meets this threat with a practice of culturally regulated violence. The concept of adventure suggests that social conflicts can be miraculously displaced from the ‘civilized’ centre to the wild periphery in order to be settled there by violent means. While it temporarily lifts cultural taboos around aggression and belligerence, adventure endows its protagonists with an unusual resilience towards the destructive physical and psychological effects of violence. In modern experiences of war, however, this form of psycho-somatic wish-fulfilment becomes suspiciously ideological since it denies the reality of trauma.

The 2023 annual conference of the Munich Research Unit Philology of Adventure will examine the many ways in which adventure relates to violence, paying special attention to the violent dimension of narrative form itself. Narrative devices such as cliff-hangers, episodic division and endless repetition have an aggressive potential of their own that must be taken into account.

Thursday, January 19th

09.30–10.00   Martin von Koppenfels / Manuel Mühlbacher: Welcome & Introduction

10.00–11.00   Susanne Gödde (Berlin): Das Martyrium der Enthaltsamkeit: Zur paradoxen Verschränkung von Reinheit und Gewalt im antiken Liebes- und Abenteuerroman

11.30–12.30   Alexander Kirichenko (Berlin): Violence and Empire in the Greek and Roman Novel

14.00–15.00   Will Hasty (Gainesville): Adventure as Cultural Allegory of Shock and Awe

15.00–16.00   Martin von Koppenfels (Munich): Dispositive der Verwilderung

16.30–17.30   Will McMorran (London): Sensing Fictional Violence: Reading with the Marquis de Sade

Keynote Lecture

On Zoom with a screening at the conference site (Literaturhaus München)

18.15   David Quint (Yale): Bandits and Brothers

To participate online, please register by emailing manuel.muehlbacher@lrz.uni-muenchen.de

Friday, January 20th

9.00–10.00   Hanno Ehrlicher (Tübingen): Schelme im Krieg: Erzählte und erzählerische Gewalt im pikaresken Abenteuerroman

10.00–11.00   Ralf Junkerjürgen (Regensburg): Gewalt und Geschichte: Inszenierungen des Kampfes in historischen Romanen von Alexandre Dumas

11.30–12.30   Kathrin Härtl (Munich): Precarious Adventures: “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano” (1789)

14.00–15.00   John Miller (Sheffield): The Aesthetics of Cruelty in the Boy’s-Own Fur Trade

15.00–16.00   Vid Stevanovitch (Braunschweig): Organizing Violence in T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom

16.30–17.30   Elisabeth Hutter (Augsburg): Abenteuer und (Ohn-)Macht. Ästhetisierungen der Gewalt in der deutschen Kolonialprosa

Saturday, January 21st

9.00–10.00   Michael Auer (Vienna): Adventurous Hearts: Ernst Jünger’s Avant-Garde

10.00–11.00   Anke Hennig (Munich): Soviet Adventures in Times of Terror

11.30–12.30   Jörn Ahrens (Gießen): Abenteuer ohne Helden(reise)? Über einige Western