The Fictional First World War: Imagination and Memory Since 1914
An International Conference at the Centre for the Novel
Sir Duncan Rice Library, University of Aberdeen, 6-9 April 2017

Plenary Speakers: Oliver Kohns, University of Luxembourg; Randall Stevenson, University of Edinburgh; and Steven Trout, University of South Alabama

The First World War was a very real event. However, since August 1914, authors have been writing their own versions of it. During the war, novels and short stories shaped public opinion about the conflict. After its close, fiction became a means of recalling and re-examining events. The war was ‘fictional’ in other ways too. Many supposedly truthful accounts of the war, whether in newspaper reports or in personal memoirs, were not as factual as they seemed. Wartime writing in combatant nations was heavily censored; post-war writing was often flawed by the passing of time and the experience of trauma. So, while the war of 1914-18 is often recalled through poetry, the fictions of the war offer challenging perspectives, and raise powerful questions about experience and art.

Proposals for panels and individual papers are invited by Friday 16 December 2016.
Please send to the Conference Chair: Professor Hazel Hutchison, University of Aberdeen: h.hutchison@abdn.ac.uk
More information at: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/sll/research/centre-for-the-novel-215.php

Conference flyer: ffww-call-for-papers