False or misleading statements, tall tales and gossip are all paradoxically predicated on some particular 'truth' that the speaker or writer is trying to convey. Fiction is essentially a lie (though perhaps not intended to deceive) and its presentation of itself as 'truth' and the incorporation of historical fact makes it difficult to distinguish the fact from the fib. Lies and deception amass in non-fiction too: the lies inherent in political rhetoric, the bias of biographies and historical chronicles, the representations of fact in arguments for and against an ideology. And the internet, with its facilitation of impersonal and anonymous communication and rapid exchange of information, has become a bastion of assorted half-truths and lies. As it becomes more difficult to ascertain what is 'truthful' information and what is not it behoves us to consider the human obsession with lies - how we lie, the reasons for it and the way it is built into our nature and society.
| PROGRAMME |
| 9.30-10.00 |
Registration: Room G22/26, Ground Floor, Senate House south block |
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| 10.00-11.00 |
Welcome and Keynote: Professor Richard North (University College London): |
Room G22/26 |
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'Adam and Eve in Genesis B and the first lie on earth' |
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| 11.00 |
Coffee |
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| 11.30-1.00pm |
PARALLEL SESSION 1: CREATING THE TRUTH |
Rooms: 1A G22/26; 1B G34; 1C G35 |
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1A. Fables |
1B. Alternative Truths |
1C. Lies of Narration |
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Zoe Hawkins: '"To fabling fell, and smooth conceits": Milton and the ethics of narrative'
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Nicholas Belluzzo: 'Alternative archaeology'
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Malgorzata Schulz: 'To lie or not lie? - characters and narration in Mother of Pearl by Mary Morrissy' |
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Kathryn Jagger: 'Teaching through deception in Ælfric's Homilies and Lives of Saints'
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Katherine Maltby: ' "Your Spirits Are Attentive": Deceptive Metamorphosis in The Merchant of Venice'
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Shahriyar Mansouri: 'Deception and survival through solipsistic ventriloquial voice in Samuel Beckett's Malone Dies and The Unnamable' |
12.30
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Josephine Billingham: 'A dilemma, a doctor and a deceit: finding truths in an impossible tale'
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Timothy Bell: 'Visit Sunny Prestatyn: Advertising and Lies in Post-War Britain
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Kaja Marczewska: 'Referencing fakery/faking the reference: a reader's guide to footnotes in Nabokov and Danielewski' |
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| 1.00-2.00pm |
Lunch for everyone |
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| 2.00-3.30pm |
PARALLEL SESSION 2: (RE)CREATING THE TRUTH |
Rooms: 2A G22/26; 2B G34; 2C G35 |
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2A. Propaganda |
2B. Creations of History |
2C. Methods of Creation/Creative Acts |
2.00
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Eric Lacey: 'Christian propaganda in Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People and the conversion of Edwin of Northumbria'
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Sophie Hughes: 'Borges and "history": the pleasure of distortion in A Universal History of Infamy'
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Joseph Horton: 'Deep Rez: Unreliable character/narration in fiction'
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2.30
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Hannah Leah Crummé: 'Lies and deception: the English representation of the Spanish Golden Age 1554-1600'
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Calum Mechie: 'Private truths and public lies in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four'
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Tim Miles: '"That's why we all hate Ben Elton now - because we believed in him": lies, fake spontaneity and trust in stand-up comedy' |
3.00
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Coromoto Power Febres: 'Censoring and the extreme right'
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Marco Pescetelli: 'A restored film from a semiotic point of view'
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Christine Twite: 'Based on a True Story?: Ivan and the Dogs and Reality on the Contemporary Stage' |
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| 3.30-4.00pm |
Coffee |
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| 4.00-5.30pm |
PARALLEL SESSION 3: DECEPTION AND PERSECUTION |
Rooms: 3A G22/26; 3B G34; 3C G35 |
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3A. Hoaxes |
3B. Paradox |
3C. Libel |
4.00
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Anne Isherwood: 'Editing lies and deception: William Jaggard's The Passionate Pilgrim'
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Victoria Symons: 'Deceptive language: paradoxes of communication in Old English poetry' |
Yi-Hsin Hsu: 'Williamite propoganda and the rhetoric of deliverance in drama after the Glorious Revolution'
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4.30
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Kate Crowcroft: 'The "Ern Malley" hoax and modernism's Shakespeare'
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Nicky Bothoms: '"In sooth, I know not why I am so sad": a deception concelaed within the truth'
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Claire Bryony Williams: 'Libels and sexual beguilement in the 1615-1616 Overbury murder trials'
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5.00
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Ami Oki-Siekierczak: 'Misunderstanding "Shakespeare": The 19th Century Japanese Method of Recreating Shakespeare's Kaleidoscopic Language in Japanese'
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Daniel Krupa: ' "To be Taken with a Grain of Salt": the ghost story and strategies of factionality'
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| 5.30-7.00pm |
PARALLEL SESSIONS 4: LIES AND THE SELF |
Rooms: 4A G22/26; 4B G34; 4C G35 |
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4A. Authorship |
4B. Psychological Lies |
4C. Urban Living |
5.30
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Urvashi Vashist: 'Imposture: Virginia Woolf and the making of "I"'
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Ozlem Basak: 'Trapped in the cages of my dreams: on living the lie and the recurrence of myths' |
Alicia Rix: '"The car as cover story: deceptive moments in Henry James'
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6.00
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Gwendolen Boyle: '"Smoked glasses and false whiskers": motifs of disguise and anonymity in Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again'
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Robert Tzeska: 'Deception and psychological research'
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Anna Kanakova: 'Orwell's 1930s London and the pretence of Bohemianism'
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6.30
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Tul'si Bhambry: 'Revelation and disguise: Witold Gombrowicz's narrative strategies of authenticity and authorship'
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Neil Bramley: 'Deception, self-deception and cognition'
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| 7.00pm |
Wine reception |
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