Interdisciplinary Workshop

Retelling is a transhistorical practice, perhaps even the most fundamental one in the Western literary tradition: authors have always retold prior material, making it available— for various purposes—to new (and later) audiences. But what exactly is retelling? What does it entail as a practice, and to what extent does it differ from other forms of rewriting? What distinguishes the products of retelling—retellings or Wiedererzählungen—from other modes or genres of writing?

The aim of this workshop is to explore both the potentials and the challenges of retelling as a practice and a product. We are particularly interested in premodern contexts of retelling and how they can inform our broader understanding of the concept. For medieval writers, in particular, the subject matter was always already there: the materia of narratives pointed to something “before and beyond the text: realms of human histories and (un)realities as handed down by earlier conventions, traditions, and authorities” (Mehtonen 1996: 58). In German Medieval Studies, Wiedererzählen has been extensively discussed, a debate that began with Franz Josef Worstbrock’s 1999 essay “Wiedererzählen und Übersetzen.”

In our workshop, we aim to connect medievalists’ perspectives on retelling with adjacent (and often overlapping) theories and approaches, including adaptation, variation, repetition, intertextuality, hyper- and transtextuality, seriality, and translation. What is the relevance of retelling as a practice in contemporary literature—especially in light of the current boom of retellings, particularly of ancient material, in English-language publications? What are the implications of theorizing retelling in relation to reception studies, particularly classical reception studies and medievalism studies? To what extent do retellings challenge conventional ideas of the unique artwork and its stability, authorship and copyright, creativity and originality?

We invite participants to suggest one secondary text for the group to read and discuss, and to bring one example of what they consider to be a retelling (or an adaptation, a case of hypertextuality, repetition, seriality, etc.). Instead of traditional papers, the workshop will feature brief contributions from each participant on their example, followed by in-depth discussions of terms, concepts, and ideas.