Fredrik Renard: "The Narration of Experience and the Modern Novel”.

Forskningspresentation av Fredrik Renard, Stockholms universitet. 

Seminariet hålls på svenska. 

Abstract: 

The talk puts forth a theory and history of the ‘experiential moment’ of romance, traced from Homer’sOdyssey to Rousseau. Differing from other forms of the moment that have been bequeathed by Western tradition, the experiential moment foregrounds experientiality within a self-enclosed and atelic temporality – a time that goes nowhere. Building on previous theories of epic and romance that see them as conflicting temporal forms, the first part of talk explores how the experiential moment in traditional romance always exists in tension with the temporality of the epic project of the collective. The second part proposes a new reading of Rousseau by showing how his three works Julie ou La Nouvelle Héloïse, Les Confessions, and Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire not only continue this conflict into the modern period, but also begin to reverse the old hierarchical relationship between epic and romance. It is argued that Rousseau in his final work the Rêveries strives to liberate the experiential moment from epic temporality altogether and thereby lays the foundation for a new way of approaching the moment in literary modernity.