Dear Colleagues,
We have been invited by the electronic journal Mots Pluriels (refereed) to be the guest editors of an issue dealing with the African Short Story. This invitation offers an interesting opportunity to build on the work presented at two conferences organised by the University of Louvain's Centre d'etudes de la Nouvelle on the theme "The French Short Story at the boundary of other genres" (Metz 1996 and Louvain-la-Neuve 1997; Proceedings published in 1997). Whereas the conferences dealt with the full gamut of French short stories, the current call is for papers which specifically address the African Short Story, a genre still little studied in spite of its growing importance in the field of African literature. The relationship of the African Short Story to other genres will be the focus of the issue and contributors are encouraged to investigate the nexus between this genre and oral literature, poetry, novel, essay, theatre, literary critique, and also radio, cinema, etc..
Contributions can deal with the writing of a single author, with the works of an era or that of a country or a cluster of regions. However, analysis has to be approached from a comparativist perspective, shedding some light on the originality of the African short story in showing what has been retained from European origins and what belongs to the specificity of its African development and the tailoring by African authors to suit their needs.
Guy Ossito Midiohouan and Vincent Engel
Articles of 3000-3500 words should be sent separately to the two guest editors:
One copy should be posted to:
Professeur Guy Ossito Midiohouan, Departement de lettres modernes
Faculte des lettres, arts & sciences humaines, Universite nationale du Benin, BP 526, Cotonou (Bénin);
and
A second copy should be emailed and posted to:
Professeur Vincent Engel, Centre d'etudes de la nouvelle, Universite catholique de Louvain, Faculte de philosophie & lettres, Place Blaise Pascal 1, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgique) (adresse electronique: [email protected]).
Please add a short bio/biliography (5 or 6 lines) of the author of the article mentioning affiliation, teaching activities and latest publications (3 or 4)
Deadline for submission : 15 October 1998.
For more information, please write to the guest editors (Email: [email protected])
or to
Dr. Jean-Marie Volet. The University of Western Australia. Department of French Studies. Fax: (61) 8 6488 1182 . Email: [email protected]
Mots Pluriels : https://www.arts.uwa.edu.au/MotsPluriels/MP.html