Endless Narration: Exploring New Trends and Perspectives in Eastern and Western Literature East China Normal University, Shanghai, April 5th – 7th, 2024

Narrative plays a fundamental role in the quest for understanding and meaning-making undertaken by homo narrans in the world. It serves as an intuitive medium for organizing and sharing personal thoughts and memories, as well as for forming collective community ideas. The versatile affordances of narration demand theoretical, critical, and ethical reconsideration from intercultural standpoints. Narratology, as a branch of literary theory, delves into the study of narrative structure and function. Fictional narratives are conveyed through a voice belonging to the narrator. However, the modes, approaches, and perspectives of narration are endless. This inaugural colloquium aims to illuminate and navigate the rich tapestry of narrative traditions in both Eastern and Western literature.

The Conference Endless Narration: Exploring New Trends and Perspectives in Eastern and Western Literature 2024 is co-hosted by East China Normal University (China), University of Göttingen (Germany) and Sorbonne Nouvelle University (France), and co-organized by Göttingen-Shanghai Forum, Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, Neohelicon, and Fabula.

Our conference invites you on a journey through the diverse trends of narratology that have shaped narration in Eastern and Western literary traditions. This interdisciplinary exploration aims to foster dialogue among scholars and researchers to understand the intricate ways narratives unfold across different cultural landscapes. Throughout the conference, we will delve into the evolving contours and trends of narratology — from classical epics to contemporary narratives — and examine how cultural, philosophical, moral, historical, and linguistic factors influence the construction and interpretation of narratives. By bringing together voices from diverse backgrounds, we seek to examine the prevailing thoughts and trends within narratology studies, laying the groundwork for an initial understanding of recent studies in Eastern and Western contexts. This exploration will serve as a prelude to subsequent, more focused research endeavors.

We invite narrative scholars to address the following (and related) issues:

The Latest Trends in Narratology

•     Intercultural Narrativity
•     Narrativity and Folklore Studies
•     Narration in Philosophy
•     Emergent Methods and Theory in Narrative Studies
•     Storytelling Boom and Its Social Relevance
•     Narrative and Action: Political Narratives and Counter-narratives
•     Potential of Fiction and “The Hatred of Fiction”
•     Revisiting “Unreliable Narrator”
•     Narrator and Author
•     Narrative Ethics
•     Events in “Plotless Literature”
•     Intermedial and Digital Narratives