Trans Canada Institute presents: New Realisms for the Realities of the 21st Century
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Date
Friday, January 28, 2011
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What
This one-day event will bring together a small group of writers and scholars — small so that there is the opportunity for intense discussion —to address how what we have come to know as "literary fiction" has outgrown its long-established realist conventions.
Alongside so-called "literary fiction" many other forms have blossomed in the last fifty years or so, forms that don't register in the mainstream national imaginary, but that nonetheless are an important and indeed constitutive part of the Canadian literary tradition. We might call those forms "avant-garde," "speculative fiction," "new narrative," or "experimental." Some of these forms attempt to engage that "thing" we call reality without cranking it into the stilted structure of conventional representational practices, preferring, perhaps, to represent time as it unfolds; others privilege language as what constitutes our reality; still others take their "realist" cues from futures as yet to come. Our concept of realism, like our concept of the literary, is long overdue for renovation, reconstruction, and fresh shoots.
This colloquium is designed to provide a critical and dialogic space for Canadian writers and critics to point us in productive directions.
All are welcome. Light lunch and refreshments. For schedule of events, visit the Insitute website
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Where
TransCanada Institute, 9 University Avenue East
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When
Friday, January 28
10 am - 6:30 pm
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Cost
Free
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