This is a series of working papers initially derived from a project designed to introduce Degree students to research. TRELLIS was an acronym for ‘Teaching Research in English-Language Literatures, Intermediate Stage’. The project sought to build links between research carried out at postgraduate and professional level and the kind of research-oriented work that is offered to Degree students. It included a series of seven meetings -the TRELLIS Seminars- which ran in the Department of English at the UAM between 2002 and 2005.
The seminars concentrated on issues at the intersection between canonical literature, popular culture, and folklore. Because this intersection appears to view only when researchers take up a global perspective—when they engage a field theory of text—the three domains under scrutiny have occasionally been referred to as ‘the Field triangle’, and the term may continue in use so long as we remember that it is not meant to be exhaustive and that other areas of interaction will be found to exist in the textual Field.
Among other tasks, and as part of their training, participants in the TRELLIS Seminars were asked to prepare and deliver a 20-minute paper. Papers dealt with problems of narrative structure, evolution, thematics, and so on in such areas as cartography, videogames, myth, epic, fairytale, ballad, popular music, medieval romance, children ’s literature, film, the comics, advertising, and others. It was the result of these talks that the present series was initially designed to publish.
Meanwhile, however, the ‘trellis’ concept outgrew its original intention and now has the full function suggested by the word: an interlace of efforts which, in bringing together various types of research at different levels of complexity, seeks to reinforce and disseminate results, and thereby to create a feedback loop between Graduate and Postgraduate levels. One practical aim is to provide a flexible, reasonably speedy method of publication by editing each paper independently—though the possibility that some of these materials may eventually be collected in book form on thematic or other criteria is not to be ruled out.
The TRELLIS Papers will accordingly edit a variety of materials that will include work presented by Postgraduate students, by speakers—both staff and students—in the Madrid Gothic Seminar and other forums, as well as other relevant work. Submissions to The TRELLIS Papers will be expected to conform to the editorial policy outlined in the second number of the series. It is planned to transform this into an on-line publication. For details see SECTION 6. PUBLISHING.
Nº 1 Manuel Aguirre (2006)
‘The Lure of the Limen: An Introduction to the Concept, Uses and Problems of Liminality’
Nº 2 Manuel Aguirre and Charles Farrell (2007)
‘A Style-Guide for Research Students in English Literature’
Nº 3 Nancy Bredendick (2008)
‘Hemingway ’s Death In The Afternoon from a Liminalist Perspective’
Nº 4 Daniel Essig García (2007)
‘Theory and History of Reading: A Bibliography’
Nº 5 Raquel García Iglesias (2009)
‘ “Counterfeit Hero:” The Gothic Subversion of Fairytale Structure in Lewis ’ The Monk’
Nº 6 Beatriz Sánchez Santos (2009)
‘Passion, Reason and Freedom: The Complexity of the Discourse of Passions
