“Only Connect: Reconsidering E.M. Forster’s and Ismail Merchant and James Ivory’s Howards End”
E.M. Forster’s Howards End (1910) has been the object of a vibrant critical debate. Often defined as inheriting from the long-standing tradition of the condition-of-England novel, it has, more recently, also been read as portraying British society on the brink of a profound social, political and cultural change. From a more strictly literary point of view, it can be read as a transition text, heralding high modernism, while still somehow looking back to the “great tradition” of Victorian fiction. E.M. Forster’s novel Howards End may thus be seen as engaging with the ethos of relationality, whether it be from a social, cultural or literary point of view. Its having been adapted to the screenin1992 by Ismail Merchant and James Ivory raises yet new issues regarding aesthetic relationality, the comparison between film and novel offering a fruitful ground to reflect back on Forster’s aesthetics but also reconsider the historical and aesthetic significance of Ivory’s adaptations. The new Agrégation syllabus offers an opportunity for a timely contextual reflexion on how both novel and film represent the social fabric of Edwardian England, the notion of “culture,” as well as this aesthetic of transition in the history of British fiction and in adaptation studies.
A one-day conference will be held at the University Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3, organized in collaboration with the SEAC (Société d’Études Anglaises Contemporaines), the University Toulouse Jean Jaurès (CAS – EA 801) and the ENS Ulm, to discuss the issues raised by the film and the novel, and survey recent critical approaches and debates concerning the condition-of-England novel and its transposition.
9H ouverture
Chair: Catherine Bernard (Université de Paris)
9h10-9h45 Elsa Cavalié (Université d’Avignon), et Adèle Cassigneul (CAS): “’People who deny the comic muse are all wrong’: English Comedy in Howards End”
9h45- 10h15 David Scourfield (Maynooth University): “‘The Carpet Fits’: Coincidence and Fate”
10h 15- 10h45 Marie Laniel (Université de Picardie-Jules Verne): “‘Endless iterations’: The Resonance of Place in E.M. Forster’s Howards End”
Pause 15 min
Chair: Marc Porée (ENS Ulm)
11h-11h30 Caroline Pollentier (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3): “Between Affect and Biopolitics: Relations of Belonging in Howards End”
11h30-12h Howard Booth (University of Manchester): “E.M. Forster’s Howards End, Adaptation and Colonialism: World Systems and the Metropole Then and Now”
12h-12h30 Scott McCracken (University of London): « Aspects of the Novelistic: Howards End and the Twentieth-Century Novel »
12H30-14H lunch
Chair: Pascale Tollance (Université Lyon 2)
14h-14h30 Andrew Thacker (Nottingham Trent University): “Of Rust, Dust, and Rubber: Rereading Howards End”
14h30-15h Christian Gutleben (Université de Nice): “Glorious Bastards : The Praise of Impurity in E.M. Forster’s Howards End”
15h-15h30 Sam Waterman (University of Pennsylvania): “The Schlegel Capitalism: The Aesthetic Economies of Modernist Adventure”
Pause 15 min
Chair: Laurent Mellet (Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès), Catherine Lanone (Université Paris 3-Sorbonne nouvelle)
15h45 – 16h15 Jean-François Baillon (Université de Bordeaux 3): “James Ivory’s Ghosts: Howards End as Haunted House”
16h15-16h45 Christophe Gelly (Université Clermont Auvergne) : “Blank Spaces, Slow Motion and Mismatch —Connection and Disconnection in the Editing of James Ivory’s Howards End (1992)”
16h45-17h15 Dennis Tredy (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3): “Readjustment and Reaccentuation: What Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s Screenplay Reveals about James Ivory’s Film Adaptation of Howards End”