The Institute of Polish Philology and the Institute of Neophilology
of the University of Białystok are proud to invite everyone to
Textual Worlds of Fantastic Literature ( -> The Programme in Polish)
which will be held in Białystok 24 and 25 September 2015.
This year’s meeting will be our second academic conference devoted to fantastic literature. The first conference, which focused on religious motifs, was held in 2012. It was followed by the publication of a monograph entitled Motywy religijne we współczesnej fantastyce (Religious Motifs in Contemporary Fantastic Literature).
In contrast to the cultural and sociological paradigms which have dominated the Polish academic discourse on fantastic literature, this year we intend to focus on the philological and historical aspects of fantastic literature. We also wish to pay attention to the literary aspects and poetics of fantastic texts written by Polish and foreign authors. We welcome contributions from scholars from all branches of philology.
Individual presentations, which can be delivered in Polish or English, may address one of the following topics:
– transformations of fantastic literature: from fantastic “realism” (“the golden age”) to modernism and post-modernism;
– the literary construction of imaginary worlds – the unfamiliar created from the familiar;
– fantastic literature – between structuralism and rhetoric (the fantastic as a property of the text, the fantastic and the paradigm of the novel of realism);
– types of references between the imaginary world and the real world, fantastic literature as an exomimetic genre, fantastic literature and transrealism;
– functions of cyclicality;
– intertexuality and metafiction;
– “book” and “text” as themes of fantastic literature;
– “retelling” as a characteristic form of fantasy fiction;
– text and transmedialism, the popularity of franchise;
– fantastic literature and philosophy (imaginary world and “real” philosophy);
– post-modernism and fantastic literature – the poetics of post-modernism and fictional worlds;
– fantastic and artificial languages: inspirations, functions within the text, the concept of “the first/universal” language, fantastic word-formation.
The conference will be followed by the publication of a monograph in 2016.
The conference fee, which will cover the costs of publication, meals and a banquet, is 400 PLN. Participants are invited to submit their proposals in the form of 150-word abstracts to fantastyka@uwb.edu.pl by 30 June 2015. Notices of acceptance will be sent in early July 2015.