Neus Rotger | Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (original) (raw)

Conferences by Neus Rotger

Focusing on poetics as much as on questions of genre theory and cultural history, this panel seek... more Focusing on poetics as much as on questions of genre theory and cultural history, this panel seeks to look critically at the current upsurge of interest in the so-called global novel (Siskind 2010; Beecroft 2015, 2016; Hoyos 2015; Habjan and Imlinger 2016, Kirsch 2016) and further the discussion on the need and reach of this still loose concept. The “global turn,” together with the new conceptions of time and space in narrative studies, set the grounds for a renewed approach to the novel and its relation to the historical and cultural process of globalization. On this basis, we identify three interrelated points of reflection that we propose to address in the seminar:

1. Global markets, cosmopolitanism, and the explosion of the canon. How and since when is the novel paradigmatically “global”? Which are the institutional and economic mechanisms for its increasingly global circulation and consumption? Does the geographical expansion of the novel at a world scale imply a new—more cosmopolitan—ethical and political frame? What is the impact of the genre in the conflicted and unequal literary relations within the “world literary system” and a globalized canon? Is the global novel the most suitable genre to comply with or respond to global conflicts such as environmental crisis, drug or human trafficking, terrorism, or migration?

2. Global tropes, forms, and plots. What literary works qualify as global novels and why? How global is the world imagined by the global novel? How does the novel engage with global concerns in terms of content and form? Can we identify tropes, forms, specific uses of plot, time, space, and language, or other narrative strategies characteristic of the global novel? Do they suffice to build a working definition, or even a poetics, of the genre? If so, how does it relate to other genres?

3. The global novel in theory. What are the uses of the global novel in theory? Does the “global novel” mean the same and have the same critical implications in, for example, Postcolonial Studies, Translation Studies, and Ecocriticism? How can the global novel help us develop new perspectives in literary analysis? How could it be problematic? What does it tell us about the global anxieties of literary studies?

Seminari Literatura i Cultura de l’Edat Mitjana i l’Edat Moderna Universitat de Barcelona

Historicizing Romance Contestant: Anthony J. Cascardy

Permanently in a state of crisis, the novel has from its origins been immersed in a tireless sear... more Permanently in a state of crisis, the novel has from its origins been immersed in a tireless search for legitimation. Alien to classical theorisation and without the support of authorised models, the novel barely warrants a specific mention, as an independent entity, in the poetics of classicism, which perpetuate and extend the Aristotelian debate over tragedy and epic. Due in part to this lack of roots, the genre met with the disdain of the erudite, who over the course of seventeenth-century France issued harsh criticisms of its irregularity, lack of verisimilitude and moral ambiguity. Despite –or perhaps precisely because of– its growing popularity, the novel was consigned to the lowest ranks of the literary hierarchy, if it was not cast outside the walls of the belles-lettres altogether. And yet far from leaving this new genre to fend for itself in the limbo of indeterminacy, the authors and theorists of the period threw themselves into constructing a definition of the novel with the aim of regulating and dignifying the form.
Throughout the seventeenth century, there was an interesting tension between disciplines in these theoretical efforts to legitimize the novel. On the one hand, theorists of the time attempted to regulate the novel through poetics, equating the new genre with classical epic and tragedy, with their very same models and laws. Furthermore, the novel was interpreted from the parameters of rhetoric, measuring the effectiveness of novel writing as a discursive practice, with compelling similarities to history. The Traité de l’origine des romans (1670), by Pierre-Daniel Huet, and the Sentiments sur l’Histoire (1683), by the largely unknown Du Plaisir, both illustrate perfectly this disciplinary tension, which later led to conflicting visions of the novel. In this paper, I examine the sense of this tension and its subsequent impact in literary history.

Book Chapters by Neus Rotger

The Making of the Humanities. Volume II: From Early Modern to Modern Disciplines. Eds. Rens Bod, Jaap Maat, Thijs Weststeijn. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012, 321-336. ISBN: 978-90-8964-455-8

History is Mostly Repair and Revenge. Discourses of/on History in the Literature in English. Ed. Liliana Sikorska. Frankfurt am Main, New York: Peter Lang Verlag, 2010, 57-67. ISBN: 978-3-631-59771-2

The purpose of this paper is to examine the dialogue between historical and literary modes of int... more The purpose of this paper is to examine the dialogue between historical and literary modes of interpreting and representing the past in the early Gothic, and to show how the use (and abuse) of historical data became the principal strategy to legitimate the emergence of a literary genre that consciously subverted the poetics, taste and morals of the time. Presented as a blend between the ancient and the modern romance, the early Gothic was received as a highly problematic mode of writing, mainly because it attempted to revive the old taste for fantasy against the neoclassic demand for probability, generality and ethical probity. The analysis of works such as Horace Walpole's The castle of Otranto, Clara Reeve's The old English baron or Sophia Lee's The recess will demonstrate how history serves as a fast and secure route to criticism, for in these romances the recreation of a remote past functions as a guarantor of vraisemblance, as an appealing atmosphere of enchantment, and, most importantly, as the proper and authorised source for the poetic imagination. In this context, it is important to note that the dignification of the genre it is also due to the interest of the late eighteenth-century British historians in restoring the value and scope of medieval culture and the fictional versions of that age.

La investigación en el área de las Humanidades. Eds. Carme de-la-Mota, Gemma Puigverd. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2009, 183-198. ISBN: 978-84-9742-976-4

Literatura hipertextual y teoría literaria. Ed. María José Vega. Madrid: Marenostrum, 2003, 202-209. ISBN: 978-84-95509-59-8

Notes by Neus Rotger

Banque de données AGON. La dispute: cas, querelles, controverses & création à l’époque moderne

Puentes de Crítica Literaria y Cultural 1 (1/2014): 74-77. ISSN: 2341-0124

Book Reviews by Neus Rotger

Among the three traditional branches of literary studies-history, theory, and criticism-the latte... more Among the three traditional branches of literary studies-history, theory, and criticism-the latter is better known for being at odds with academic scholarship. Developed within and outside of literature departments, criticism's conflicted status as a field of knowledge raises some interesting questions concerning discipline formation, institutional control, and specialization within the humanities-and in contrast to the sciences. Michael Gavin, assistant professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of South Carolina, confronts some of these questions in his first book, The Invention of English Criticism, 1650-1760, tracing criticism's undisciplined history from the Civil War and Interregnum years to the Restoration and eighteenth-century England.

querelle des livres. Petit essai sur le livre à l'âge numérique. París: Buchet-Chastel (Essais et... more querelle des livres. Petit essai sur le livre à l'âge numérique. París: Buchet-Chastel (Essais et Documents), 2012. 124 p.

Thesis by Neus Rotger

This thesis proposes the existence of a Quarrel of the novel, a "guerre littéraire" lasting at le... more This thesis proposes the existence of a Quarrel of the novel, a "guerre littéraire" lasting at least thirty years (1670-1700) in which the Ancients and Moderns clashed over the meaning and value of the novelistic genre in early modern France. Against the notion of the rise of the novel from the emergence of a single founding work, whether Lazarillo, Don Quijote, La princesse de Clèves or Robinson Crusoe, I contend, firstly, that the theoretical invention of the genre was at once the cause and result of various controversies, which are analysed in terms of a a quarrel, comparable to the Querelle du théâtre, des inscriptions, du merveilleux or du sublime, with which it shares a number of features. Secondly, I argue that there was a fundamental interplay between this dispute and the concurrent Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns, in which the novel was set in opposition to the classical model of the epic and the ancient paradigms of tragedy and history. Finally, I show that in the emergence of the novel, informed ideologically and rhetorically by the Quarrel, the genre was not only considered emblematic of the the new but also, and despite its overt modernity, discovered its legitimacy and theoretical roots in the authority and reasons of the Ancients. Examination of the French novelistic discourse of the seventeenth century also reveals that, from the earliest baroque poetics to the theoretical treatises on the nouvelle or nouvelle historique, the novel was defined fundamentally as a form of historical writing.

Director: David Roas (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Evaluation Committee:
Josep Solervicens (Universitat de Barcelona)
Alexis Tadié (Université Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV)
Enric Sullà (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Papers by Neus Rotger

This Year’s Conference Theme: Unfolding Disciplines in the History of the Humanities A growing bo... more This Year’s Conference Theme: Unfolding Disciplines in the History of the Humanities
A growing body of scholarship suggests that the historiography of the humanities is increasingly organized around new interdisciplinary collaborations that affect the very understanding of what it means to belong to a Humanities discipline. This year we invite contributions that interlace different disciplinary approaches in order to frame humanistic scholarship in terms of a continued engagement with the limits and possibilities offered by the softening and even erasure of disciplinary boundaries. Participants are also encouraged to think expansively about the impact of the ongoing process of reinvention of established as well as new disciplinary fields as a result of increased cross-pollination and collaboration.