Programme

Rethinking Epiphany – Perspectives from the Fringes

Tampere University, 13 September 2024

Location: auditorium VIRTA 109, Åkerlundinkatu 5, Tampere

 

In literature, epiphany is considered as the moment of revelation, illumination, or enlightenment of a fictional character. Epiphany has been associated particularly with modernist literature, and with the foregrounding of powerful moments of heightened significance in the works of Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and their contemporaries. This symposium considers the legacy of such “moments of being” (Woolf 1939) and proposes new perspectives to challenge or enrich our understanding of modernist forms of epiphany. It is particularly interested in interdisciplinary approaches to the study of epiphanies, as well as in how perspectives from the fringes add to our understanding of epiphany.

 

Keynote speakers:

Nigel Fabb, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

Päivi Mehtonen, docent, independent scholar, Finland

 

PROGRAM

09.00-09.30 registration, coffee
09.30-10.30 Symposium opening words

Keynote

Sustained Epiphanies: Medieval mysticism in recent experimental prose

Päivi Mehtonen (independent scholar)

10.30-12.00 Session 1. (Chair: Riikka Pirinen)
Chain epiphanies: Making sense of modes of production and distribution

Lieven Ameel (Tampere University)

Heterotopic moments of being in the short stories of Virginia Woolf, Clarice Lispector and Jhumpa Lahiri

Tetyana Kasima (University of Tartu)

Exemplum as epiphany – epiphany as exemplum

Maria Mäkelä (Tampere University)

12.00-13.00 Lunch break

Restaurant Myllärit, Åkerlundinkatu 4, 33100 Tampere

13.00-14.30 Session 2 (Chair: Lieven Ameel)
But What Happened Then? Fictionality and Failing Epiphanies in Kierkegaard

Ville Hämäläinen (Tampere University)

Epiphany and fictional speech: tracing the tellability in dialogue narration

Anna Kuutsa (Tampere University)

Reaching Ipseity Through Narrative Epiphany in Damso’s Ipséité

Olivier Salès (Florida International University)

14.30-16.00 Session 3 (Chair: Laura Oulanne)
Modernist and ecstatic epiphanies in the short stories of Eeva-Liisa Manner

Tiia Kähärä (University of Helsinki)

Suburbia and the twilight of tomorrow – reading J. G. Ballard’s Vermillion Sands

Chan Du (University College London)

Epiphanies of Plot and Mind: Narrative Theoretical Interventions in Short Story Form

Riikka Pirinen (Tampere University)

16.00-16.30 Coffee & refreshments 
16.30-17.30 Keynote

Epiphany and surprise at the lack of variation

Nigel Fabb (University of Strathclyde)

Symposium closing words

19.00 Dinner

(self-pay; please be in touch with the organizers in case of dietary restrictions)

Restaurant Piemonte, Suvantokatu 9, 33100 Tampere

 

Organizing committee:

Lieven Ameel (Tampere University), Patricia Garcia (University of Alcalá), Laura Oulanne (University of Helsinki), Riikka Pirinen (Tampere University),

For more information contact: riikka.pirinen@tuni.fi

Symposium in collaboration with Fringe Network, University of Alcalá, Narrare research center

Labyrinth University logo Large F