In his Dictionary of Literary Devices A-Z (translated and adapted by Albert W. Halsall), Bernard Dupriez defines CONCRETIZATION as the process whereby ‘a concrete example replaces the expression of an idea.’ The resulting effect, he writes, ‘often has something comical about it, because the idea in question is reduced to one of its more limited aspects.’ Trying to give concrete or material expression to an as-yet unwritten idea – this is the effort of all writing. But in this workshop we will explore how ‘concretization’ could be activated for the purposes of writing or doing criticism. Specifically (concretely), the invitation is to imagine the history of literary and cultural criticism as a storehouse of speculative methods – not all of which have been tested. As part of this, I will share my long-held fascination for new forms of critical engagement as described in the works of writers such as Percy Lubbock, Vernon Lee, Vladimir Nabokov, and Roland Barthes (as well as my own efforts to make them concrete). Together, we will consider alternative ways of activating these methods and – seriously embracing comedy and limitation – set them to work. Our question will be: Do they work? And then: What work are they doing? What is the work of materialization and how might these experiments expand our own gestures and forms of critical engagement?

There are limited spaces available; please email iris.pearson@ell.ox.ac.uk to register. For more details about this event and the ‘Creating Criticism’ project, please visit www.creatingcriticism.web.ox.ac.uk.

Kate Briggs is a writer, editor and translator based in Rotterdam, where she co-runs the publishing project @shortpiecesthatmove. She is the author of This Little Art (a long essay on the practice of translation) and The Long Form (a novel), both published by Fitzcarraldo Editions. Her experiments in criticism include: Exercise in Pathetic Criticism (iam, 2011), ‘Story the Story In It’ (Amodern), Reading is an alternation of flights and perchings (No Press, 2013), The Nabokov Paper (iam, 2013) and Entertaining Ideas (Ma Bibliothèque, 2018). She teaches at the Piet Zwart Institute.