Art in French fiction since 1900

University of Nottingham, 11-12 April 2011

Keynote speaker: Professor Jean Duffy, University of Edinburgh

In the wake of a number of recent critical studies of the
nineteenth-century art novel (including a special issue of French
Studies, published in 2007), the University of Nottingham will
be organising a conference to examine the various forms and
manifestations of visual art in French fiction since 1900. How
do writers of fiction respond to the visual arts in their work?
To what extent do twentieth-century novels about art borrow from
nineteenth-century precedents (such as the "big three" - Le
Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu, Manette Salomon, and L'OEuvre), and to
what extent do they move beyond these narratives of artistic
creation and failure, and beyond the central trope of artist
and model, to investigate art in new ways? Why are writers
attracted to the visual, and to what extent are visual images
and prose narratives natural bedfellows? Alongside these
questions, the conference will also interrogate the boundaries
between art fiction and art criticism, and consider the ways in
which fictions of art might help us to understand the visual
domain.

The conference will be held at the University of Nottingham on 11
and 12 April 2011. Proposals are invited for 20-minute papers, in
English or French, on any aspect of the conference theme, including
(but not limited to):

- Fiction about or responding to the visual arts, including cinema
- Visual strategies of writing
- Illustration and the arts of the book
- Biographical fictions and romans à clés about artists

Proposals should be around 250 words in length, and should be sent
by 10 September 2010 to: katherine.shinglernottingham.ac.uk.

A selection of papers presented at the conference will be
published in a special issue of Nottingham French Studies.