About the project
JEUX investigates how literary authors model their own practice creatively through play. The project explores cultural practices as a potential site for creativity, innovation and community also in the contemporary world. JEUX goes beyond traditional metaphors of literature as gameplay and investigates actual literary games from theoretical, historical and empirical perspectives. An example of such a literary game is available here.
The doctoral research projects will contribute to JEUX’s investigation of representations of game-playing practices in early-modern novels, novelists’ participation in literary salons and the impact that these practices have on how the novel gets established as a genre.
Potential areas of research
Possible areas of research include but are not limited to:
(1) Reception: Playing games with the ancient world, for example in writing fictional biographies, and drawing on texts from Greek and Roman antiquity for generating fictional worlds.
(2) Interactions between literary games and the larger narrative of the novel. Possible projects investigate the relationship between the novels of the period and anthologies of portraits or letters, as well as maxims, proverbs or emblems.
(3) Presentation of narrators and their stories in collaborative settings. Possible core texts include novella collections, fictions set in the literary salons or collections of literary fairy tales.
Candidates are invited to present their own choice of core texts from French seventeenth-century literature, which can also include comparisons to other early-modern literatures (such as Italian, German or English traditions). Interdisciplinary approaches to the topic, drawing for example on anthropology, cognitive approaches to literature, game studies or philosophy, are welcome but not required.
How to apply
The deadline for applications is 15 August 2024.
You can read more on the positions and how to apply on the University of Oslo’s Jobbnorge recruitment page
Contact information
Project leader, Professor Karin Kukkonen (email)
Head of Administration, Karina Kleiva (email)
HR Adviser Evian Nordstrand (for questions on how to apply) (email)