Beth Gaylard is undertaking a Creative Writing PhD at University of Leicester where she is in her writing-up period. Her research into the topic of solastalgia in the English countryside informs a historical novel set in 20th century rural England. Her professional background is in education and training educators.
'Homesick at Home: Approaches to Solastalgia in the Context of English Pastoral Literature'
This paper will evaluate solastalgia as an evolving literary theme in novels, poetry and environmentalist/nature-centered writing. It examines approaches to desecration of pastoral idylls in classic and contemporary English literature, drawing on examples of nostalgia and the rural uncanny (literally, unhomely). This topic forms the basis of my PhD project, comprising a historical novel set in twentieth-century rural England and a commentary on the creative process behind it. This paper will outline Glenn Albrecht’s concept of solastalgia, defined as the grief experienced when a home environment is destroyed by state-endorsed corporate organisations, curtailing communities’ freedom to leave or change things back. A prime characteristic is that potentially damaging psychological effects on the affected extant communities are unassessed and unmitigated after the event. Albrecht’s work establishes solastalgia as a product of deliberate, violent, geophysical changes; this paper will mention subsequent studies in contexts ranging from natural disasters (Tapsell and Tunstall, 2008) to military occupation (Sousa, Kemp, and El-Zuhairi, 2014). This paper will link Albrecht’s original, practical application of the principle of solastalgia to its appearance in literature, exploring the influences of examples of pastoral poetry, rural dystopian fiction and uncanny literature, which underlie my PhD creative piece.
Keywords: home, nature, environment, countryside, dystopia.
Frankie Goodridge is a PhD candidate in Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of Nottingham. He did his BA in Spanish, French and English Literature, and MA in Modern Languages, at the University of Sheffield. His PhD thesis examines Spanish Amazonian literature from Peru and Colombia, focusing on ecocriticism and nature writing in poetry, novels, journals, and films, and examining representations of nature and the land in texts from the 1980s to now. He has one publication, based on his Master’s dissertation comparing the novelists James Joyce and Mario Vargas Llosa.
'Irony, Fate, and the Future in the Work of Juan Carlos Galeano'
Juan Carlos Galeano (b. 1958) is a poet, essayist, translator, and filmmaker from Caquetá, in the Colombian Amazon. His five poetry collections, one short-story collection, and two documentary films address nature, folklore, and perspectives from Amazonia. These works dialogue with Brazilian anthropologist Viveiros de Castro’s on the notion of ‘perspectivism’ (the assignment of ‘personhood’ to plants, animals and things). The differences between literary personification and philosophical perspectivism are complex, with perspectivism referring to animist belief. This paper will briefly address differences between these representative frameworks, in an exploratory way. Cuentos amazónicos (2016) reworks folk stories from diverse communities of the Amazon, and his poetry often likewise reflects the performance, humour, and brevity of oral tales. This talk addresses three tropes in particular: irony, fate, and ideas of the future. Providing points of comparison with modern Amazonian writing, Galeano’s part-satirical, part-serious ideas about Amazonian and environmentalist issues become significant through these themes.
Keywords: Amazonian literature, folk stories, poetry, documentary, perspectivism, irony, fate, futures.
Amjad Alliheibi is a PhD student in Translation Studies at the University of Leicester and lecturer of Translation Studies at the King Khalid University in Saudi Arabia. She received a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and Linguistics from King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah and a master’s degree in Translation Studies at the University of Leicester. Alliheibi’s research interests include translation of the self-help and alternative self-help genres from English into Arabic, challenges of cross-cultural translation into Arabic and translation strategies.
'Translation of Alternative Self-help Books from English into Arabic: Features of Provocative Register as a Case Study'
Alternative self-help is a relatively new subgenre of self-help that has appeared since the early 2000s. While it opposes unrealistic positivity in encouraging readers to accept their flaws and hardship, it adopts an informal and provocative register (swear words, pop-culture references and ideology). Although many languages can tolerate informality, it is difficult to translate this register into Arabic due to its diglossic nature, in which its written form is associated with eloquence and prestige. This study investigates how features of informality are used in alternative self-help books and how they have been translated from English into Arabic. Quantitative and qualitative research methods will help identify the strategies used, including taxonomies to classify the features and interviews of authors, publishers and translators for deeper insight. The translation strategies used to communicate the informal features to the target reader will be examined, exploring whether the result is a new subgenre or a blending of the source text with the self-help genre. As self-help literature adopts a writing style that is highly contextual and performative, this study will also identify whether or not the different socio-cultural and religious values of the target culture were considered and the effect this had on the delivery of typical informal elements.
Keywords: alternative self-help, English-Arabic translation, diglossia, informality, contextuality, ideology.