LLC Commons: Lara Virrey and Anna Deeny Morales

About the event

Join us for the next event of the LLC Commons initiative this semester!

The session brings together research around the theme of "Humanity and Environment within and outwith Literature," and will feature two speakers: Lara Virrey (English and Scottish Literature) and Anna Deeny Morales (Translation Studies). The session will be followed by a Q&A and general discussion. Stay on for an informal pub social after.

This space is to build community across the six departments in the School and hold interdisciplinary conversations among research staff and students - so come along!

Lara Virrey - Against Standard Time: Alternative Temporalities in Richard Jefferies’s After London (1885)

This presentation considers Richard Jefferies’s After London through the lens of new materialism and examines how Jefferies challenges hegemonic notions of time (such as that of progress, as propagated by its standardisation) by considering alternative shapes of time that are ruptured, cyclical or stagnant, challenging the smooth linear line of progress.

Focusing on the landscapes in the narrative such as the Great Forest, the Great Lake and its surrounding marshes, it text explores three key temporal dimensions: the contrast between human and deep geological time, the varying speeds of material ‘becoming’ and the persistent, toxic legacy of the Anthropocene.

Anna Deeny Morales - 'Translating the Fell and the Fuge: Gabriela Mistral’s Tala

How might we sound the relationship between the intimacy of feeding one’s child and the land’s ability or inability to relieve that child’s hunger? What temporal, rhythmic, or language structures would such a relationship take in poetic form, and why?

These questions are a central concern of Chilean Nobel Prize for Literature laureate Gabriela Mistral’s 1938 volume, Tala. Tala, which means “fells,” refers to the act of clearing regions for large-scale agricultural production, the creation of cities, or modern infrastructures. Mistral’s ultimate disquiet in Tala is grounded in her desire to define humanity in terms of our treatment of children whose wellbeing she tied to the defense of the environment in Latin America. In this talk, Anna Deeny Morales examines how her reading of Mistral’s poetry informs the practice of translating that poetry.

How to attend

This event is free to attend, and open to all. No registration is required - just show up!

About the series

LLC Commons, coordinated by research colleagues and postgraduate research students, aims to embed work undertaken across the School’s six departments in a supportive seminar series. The initiative responds to calls from staff and students alike who have indicated that they would like more opportunities to share their work and invite feedback. The series aims to build a more integrated research culture among the School community, and to connect researchers across all its departments.

Presentations might take a variety of formats: work in progress for conference papers or publications, outline plans for a chapter, a book proposal, or further research or grant plans.