Daily Archives: July 31, 2010

Centre for Comparative Literature Roundup of Posts and Links (2)

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Last week’s roundup here.

Linda Hutcheon’s post at The Mark here.

Jonathan Allen’s report on the petition and the support of celebrated scholars from all over the world here.

Sylvia Maultash Warsh, author of a newly published novel featuring Frye as a character, offers her support for the Centre here.

A report from BlogTo here.

Maclean’s article, “Academic Vandalism,” here.

Prof. Eva von Dassow’s viral video condemning budget cuts to Liberal Arts programs here.

Ottawa Citizen‘s article on the student housing crisis that cites the closing of the Centre for Comparative Literature as symptomatic of the wider problem of funding here.

Sign the petition to save the Centre here.

Daniel Defoe in the Pillory

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On this date in 1703 Daniel Defoe was placed in the pillory for seditious libel, but was pelted with flowers instead of garbage.

Frye in The Secular Scripture:

When the novel was established in the eighteenth century, it came to a public familiar with the conventions of prose romance.  It is clear that the novel was a realistic displacement of romance, and had few structural features peculiar to itself.  Robinson Crusoe, Tom Jones, Pamela, use much the same general structure as romance, but adapt that structure to a greater demand for greater conformity to ordinary experience.  This displacement gave the novel’s relation to romance, as I suggested a moment ago, a strong element of parody.  It would hardly be too much to say that, realistic fiction from Defoe to Henry James, is, when we look at it as a form of narrative technique, essentially parody-romance.  (CW , 79)