Title: The Ethical Aspects of Cli-fi
Abstract: Climate change is the biggest and most threatening challenge the human race has to face. There is obviously an audience that wants to read more about what human beings are to expect in the rapidly changing natural environment, and more and more writers want to check the possibilities and probabilities in the experimental medium of fiction. The academic analysis of this kind of literature (i.e., cli-fi) cannot disregard the ethical dimension. The climate change literature brings back the importance of commitment and it is crucial to investigate literature and art’s potentials of moral impact on societies. The lecture uses Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry of Future as its main example.
Bio: Péter Hajdu (1966, Budapest, Hungary) studied Literature, Greek and Latin at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary, and wrote his dissertation on late Roman epic poetry. He is editor-in-chief of Neohelicon, a major international journal on comparative literature studies. He is a member of advisory boards of five international journals on literary studies (Proudy, Czech Republic; Frontiers of Narrative Studies, Germany; Recherche Litteraire/Literary Research, Belgium; Primerjalna književnost, Slovenia; Clotho, Slovenia). He did extensive research in the fields of comparative literature, theory of literature, narratology, and classical philology. From 2002 to 2009 he was a member of the International Comparative Literature Association’s (ICLA) Research Committee for East- and South-East Europe, 2008-2014 he was member of the standing research committee for literary theory, and 2010-2016 member of the ICLA Executive Council. 2002-2012 secretary, since 2016 president of Hungarian Comparative Literature Association. He lectured at various universities in Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland, PR China, and Japan. He has published 6 books and more than 130 papers, and presented his research achievements in more than 70 international academic conferences. He discussed the writing of Kálmán Mikszáth, a major Hungarian prose writer in three monographs. He edited or co-edited 10 collections of articles on topics of literary theory, translation studies, nineteenth-century European literature, generic traditions, and Horace’s poetry. He has been titled Distinguished Professor at Shenzhen University since 2020.