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