Writing on the Edge

Literary Transgression and Resistance around 1900

Trinity College Dublin, 8-9 January 2026

Literary change can be understood as the continuous renegotiation and transgression of the borders between core and periphery, making ‘edginess’ a significant driver of literary innovation. Authors have worked with and against boundaries of various kinds, whether to obtain a more central position in the cultural field, in appropriating and subverting established literary traditions, or in scenarios of resistance and calls to arms against the centre from the margins. Are the edges of literature where the in- and outside are renegotiated and subverted? Or can edginess reinstate such boundaries? In the most literal sense, the margins of individual literary texts themselves have, especially in manuscripts and notebooks, furnished a space for cross-medial experiments that in their own ways resist or transgress established concepts of text, genre, or form: notes and doodles are usually removed from final or published versions (think of Franz Kafka’s drawings or Robert Walser’s eccentric notational practices). On a more political level, edginess refers to attempts at provoking strong affects and reactions, at unsettling and causing discomfort. Edginess can also refer to a tense state caused by uncertainty about what comes next. To be edgy is to provoke, irritate and take risks – in behaviour or aesthetics – and is associated with offensive, subversive and even violent gestures. Having edge is asserting a position of authority for a project; losing edge signals a loss of relevance. The edges, then, can be seen as a space in which cultural and political resistance is imagined, shaped, and enacted. Does ‘edginess’ open up new ways of understanding the more subtle stages between convention and outward shock? Can edginess help us write alternative archeologies of the radical aesthetic and political experiments of the twentieth-century avant gardes? 

Against this background, this symposium aims to explore the edges of literature – in a general as well as concrete, i.e. a literal as well as figural sense – in the long nineteenth century, a period characterised by literary experimentation (e.g., different iterations of realism, the avant gardes, workers’ literature…) and socio-political tensions (e.g., political and military conflicts, social unrest, revolution…). We invite presentations (max. 20 minutes) that examine how literature challenged poetic and aesthetic norms, engaged with marginal or outsider positions, and experimented with form and genre to question established modes of representation, cause discomfort and unsettle readers. How did literary works defy conventions, blur boundaries, or disrupt dominant narratives? What strategies did writers employ to push against the limits of genre, authorship, or artistic legitimacy? What affective responses do such texts provoke?

Key Themes include but are not limited to…

• Imagining the edges of literature: Who or what is/can be regarded as edgy? What concepts of the margin are in circulation? How is edginess produced and imagined? How does edginess differ from related concepts like provocation, subversion, and shock?
• Textual margins and edges: How did the materiality of books, manuscripts, annotations, doodles, and paratexts shape the dynamics of literary transgression?
• Crossing borders in literature and media: How did authors use edginess in both a literal and a figural sense to engage with other artistic forms (visual arts, performance, political pamphlets, radical periodicals), in a bid to challenge aesthetic and ideological boundaries?
• Outsider figures and alternative canons: How did authors positioned at the margins—due to their style, themes, or social status—navigate literary recognition or exclusion? How did they claim positions of authority through deliberate attempts to be edgy? What determines whether transgressive works become influential or remain obscure?
• Transgression of literary forms: How did writers around 1900 challenge or reinvent aesthetic conventions, and with what experimental styles, hybrid genres, or alternative publishing formats did they attempt to redefine the literary landscape? What role did self-published, ephemeral, or suppressed texts play in disrupting dominant literary traditions?
• Genre, form, and poetic resilience: Are there specific styles of the margin that have political implications? Can writing (and reading) in the margins be an act of resilience? What could a politics of the margin entail?
• Scenarios of resistance: What scenarios of transgression are explored in literature at the margin? With what means and aims do literary texts depict strikes, demonstrations, barricades and reclaiming of public spaces/streets, acts of subversion and sabotage. How does literature imagine alternative forms of community from within the margins, based on principles of direct democracy, cooperation and solidarity?

We welcome submissions from scholars in literary studies, cultural history, media studies, and related fields. Papers may focus on specific authors, movements, or theoretical frameworks that engage with the politics and aesthetics of literary transgression.

Confirmed keynote speaker is Prof. Anne Fuchs (University College Dublin).

Please send your abstracts to rysm@tcd.ie and polly.l.dickson@durham.ac.uk before 25 August 2025. We will contact you early September if your proposal has been accepted.