Go to the top of this page.
Go to my home page.
For a special session at the 1996 MLA in Washington
*Sensation, Detection, Mission: Wilkie Collins's Generic Marginality*
Does Collins's quasi-canonical status derive from his use or creation of genres marginal to the novel proper? From the banal and popular ("generic") appeal of his fiction?
That's the 35-word MLA-newsletter version. Since there hasn't been a Collins panel at the MLA in years (ever?), I'm open to a variety of approaches to Collins: his reception, then and now; his innovative use of genre; his relationship with the reading public as manifested by his essays and prefaces; his "marginality" in general; et cetera.
2-page abstracts by March 15th to Natalka Freeland (natalka@minerva.cis.yale.edu or Department of Comparative Literature, Yale University, Box 208299, Yale Station, New Haven, CT, 06520-8299).