07/06/2013

Special One-off Seminar: Professor Monika Fludernik

'Stylistic Issues in Dickens From a Cognitive Approach'

Professor Monika Fludernik
(University of Freiburg)


3-5pm, Monday 24 June
Room 246, Senate House, Bloomsbury 

Dickens is one of the foremost craftsmen of English style and uses a wide variety of techniques and devices in his novels. The lecture will look at Dickens' language from a stylistic and cognitive perspective, analysing Dickens'  style from the standpoint of its relevance to perception, cognition and cognitive processes. Among the aspects of Dickens'  language treated there will be metaphor, syntax and tense. Cognitive issues will be examined on the level of the narrator's discourse as well as on the level of characters' psyche.

Monika Fludernik is professor of English literature and culture at the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg, Germany, and is renowned for her contribution to the field of literary theory, particularly that of narratology. Her Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology (1996) was the co-winner of the Perkins Prize of the Society for the Study of Narrative. She won the Landesforschungspreis Baden-Württemberg (State Research Prize) in 2001 and has been a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences since 2000 and of the Academia Europaea (London) since 2008. Besides narratology and the linguistic approach to literature, her interests include postcolonial issues, eighteenth-century aesthetics, law and literature, and medieval and Renaissance studies. She is currently working on a study of prison settings and prison narratives. A larger project deals with narrative structure in English literature between 1250 and 1750.

This special event will be the final Seminar of the year. All are welcome to attend.