Saturday Onsite Presentation Session 3

Literary Studies / All Genres / Theory

Session Chair: Kenneth Toah Nsah

14:05-14:30

68095 | Intermedial Elements: Building Identity and Selfhood

Mykyta Isagulov, University of Exeter, United Kingdom

The given paper is a case study of intermedial elements used to build distinct cultural identities and the image of selfhood in W.S.Maugham’s novel The Moon and Sixpence (1919) set in England, France and Polynesia. The peculiarities of intermedial language used by the writer to enlarge the contextual field of his literary artefact are demonstrated through specific examples, primarily the analysis of available ekphratic depictions. These ekphratic fragmentation-type enlargements of the context of the novel serve the purpose of building, justifying, and showcasing the conflicts between cultures, mentalities, and arts. Thus, through the depiction of pictorial arts and the turbulent life of a self-made painter at the turn of the centuries, as seen through the eyes of a fictional popular writer, Maugham collides painting and writing as arts, English and French/Polynesian cultures, Apollonian and Dionysian as creative processes, modern and primaeval as the origins of art, as well as sets success and creative search for self-expression as artistic drivers. Altogether, these conflicts, binaries and oppositions set on the pages of the novel question the selfhoods of key characters, a painter and a writer, and serve the purpose of building two diverse cultural identities and mentalities – Englishness and non-Englishness, own and strange, acceptable and weird, accomplished commercially and accomplished spiritually. The paper concludes that intermedial elements are actively used by the writer to deepen the conflicts and enlarge the contextual field of the novel so that to reflect on the English mentality and French/Polynesian as a different and alien element.

14:30-14:55

69797 | Literary Perspective on Foresight and Futures Studies in the Face of Climate Change and Ecological Breakdown in the Congo Basin

Kenneth Toah Nsah, Université de Lille, France

In the age of a global climate and ecological crisis, how can literature in the broadest sense help us? And how can literature combine with foresight and futures studies to help us in these times of a climate emergency? In this paper, I will take a place-based, interdisciplinary literary approach to discuss how literature can contribute in addressing climate change and ecological breakdown, including biodiversity loss, in the Congo Basin in particular and in the world in general. The paper intends to highlight how literary studies can be connected to foresight and futures studies in ways that help us to anticipate, preempt and address the twin climate and ecological emergency facing the Earth today. The place at its centre is the Congo Basin in central Africa which is the second largest tropical rainforest in the world (after the Amazon in Latin America) with a significant potential for climate mitigation and biodiversity preservation. In this regard, I will suggest ways in which literature, in all genres (poetry, drama and prose), does not only contribute to narrative foresight studies, but also helps in raising ecological awareness, amplifying and inspiring youth climate activism, dismantling harmful metaphors, and imaging climate utopias and dystopias in ways that lead to more impactful climate action. The paper will draw on a range of theoretical and methodological approaches, notably postcolonial ecocriticism, environmental literary activism, foresight and futures studies, and interdisciplinary environmental humanities.