Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Literature Travelling Seminar: The Secret Politics of the Novel in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

February 24–25

Patrick Vincent

Anne-Claire Michoux, assisstante doctorante, Université de Neuchâtel

Professor John Mullan, University College London

Professor Garrett Stewart, University of Iowa

Mark Ittenson, Unizh

In this seminar, we wish to explore the different ways in which secrecy has shaped the novel, addressing the topics of dissimulation, concealment, and privacy in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fiction. We will also discuss the ways in which novels secretly operate on readers. The workshop will take place over two days (one and a half days in total). There will be two workshops, each led of one professor, two guest lectures and Q&A, student presentations with feedback from the speakers, and a final roundtable/Q&A session. From the epistolary novels of the eighteenth century to the detective and sensation fiction of the later nineteenth century, narrative plots have been driven by a search for truth. At the same time, criticism in the wake of Michel Foucault has shown the policing power of narrative and its epistemological limits, aporia, and dark secrets. The novel captivates its readers by tempting them with the promise of revealing the hidden thoughts and feelings of its characters. Secrecy is therefore central to narrative. Secrecy also involves privacy. While literary critics and historians have contested the belief that the concept of privacy emerged in the eighteenth century, it is still widely recognised that the issue was given a new level of attention in the period and continued to be developed in the Victorian period. The novel has also been seen as a tool for the secret and covert dissemination of political ideas, contemporary reviewers often commenting on the dangerous politics of novels and their readers.

Université de Neuchâtel

16