Recently Published: McRae on Domestic Travel

Andrew McRae’s Literature and Domestic Travel in Early Modern England appeared in October 2009 from Cambridge University Press. 

In the early modern period, the population of England travelled more than is often now thought, by road and by water: from members of the gentry travelling for pleasure, through the activities of those involved in internal trade, to labourers migrating out of necessity. Yet the commonly held view that people should know their places, geographically as well as socially, made domestic travel highly controversial. Andrew McRae examines the meanings of mobility in the early modern period, drawing on sources from canonical literature and travel narratives to a range of historical documents including maps and travel guides. He identifies the relationship between domestic travel and the emergence of vital new models of nationhood and identity. An original contribution to the study of early modern literature as well as travel literature, this interdisciplinary book opens up domestic travel as a vital and previously underexplored area of research.

Andrew McRae is Professor of English at the University of Exeter.

Out This Month: The Oxford Handbook of Milton

The Oxford Handbook of Milton, edited by Nicholas McDowell (Exeter) and Nigel Smith (Princeton), will be published later this month. 

Four hundred years after his birth, John Milton remains one of the greatest and most controversial figures in English literature. The Oxford Handbook of Milton is a comprehensive guide to the state of Milton studies in the early twenty-first century, bringing together an international team of thirty-five leading scholars in one volume. The rise of critical interest in Milton’s political and religious ideas is the most striking aspect of Milton studies in recent times, a consequence in great part of the increasingly fluid relations between literary and historical study. The Oxford Handbook both embodies the interest in Milton’s political and religious contexts in the last generation and seeks to inaugurate a new phase in Milton studies through closer integration of the poetry and prose. There are eight essays on various aspects of Paradise Lost, ranging from its classical background and poetic form to its heretical theology and representation of God. There are sections devoted both to the shorter poems, including ‘Lycidas’ and Comus, and the final poems, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. There are also three sections on Milton’s prose: the early controversial works on church government, divorce, and toleration, including Areopagitica; the regicide and republican prose of 1649-1660, the period during which he served as the chief propagandist for the English Commonwealth and Cromwell’s Protectorate, and the various writings on education, history, and theology. The opening essays explore what we know about Milton’s biography and what it might tell us; the final essays offer interpretations of aspects of Milton’s massive influence on later writers, including the Romantic poets.

Further information on the Oxford University Press website.

Wednesday 4 November: Exeter Early Modern Seminar Mini-Colloquium

The Exeter early modern seminar will meet tomorrow, Wednesday 4 November at 4pm, in Amory 417.

Our speakers are:

Jo Esra, ‘Truro’s Phippen Memorial: A small Monument of Great Mercy, or a Narrative of Religious Infidelity

And

Andy McInnes, ‘Pricks, Plenipotentiaries and Pornography: The Sexual/Textual Politics of James Gillray’s Graphic Satire’,

All welcome. Refreshments will follow the papers.

Wednesday: Hindle on Seventeenth-Century Lords and Tenants

The next Exeter Early Modern Seminar will take place this Wednesday 28 October in Amory 417, at 4pm. It is video linked to Cornwall (DM, seminar D). Our speaker is Professor Steve Hindle from the University of Warwick. His paper is entitled:

Lord and Tenant in Late Seventeenth-Century Warwickshire: The Case of Sir Richard Newdigate of Arbury, c.1678-1710

Refreshments will follow.

Medieval and Renaissance Seminars at Southampton

The Southampton Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Culture has published its latest seminar programme. 

Seminars take place at 6pm on Mondays in room 2115, Avenue campus, unless otherwise stated. Wine and nibbles will be provided. For more information contact Dr Chris Briggs or Ms Louise Rayment.

Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Culture: Seminar Series.

Semester 1. Autumn-Winter 2009-2010

13 October Dr. Christopher Tyerman (Hertford College, Oxford)

‘How to plan a successful crusade’ (Joint with History seminar).

Venue: Lecture Theatre B. NB Tuesday seminar.

26 October Dr. Catherine Richardson (Kent)

‘Shipwrecked Twins and Death’s Head Rings: Twelfth Night and an Interdisciplinary History of Jewellery’

9 November Dr. Philip Schwyzer (Exeter)

‘Trophies, Traces, Relics and Props: The Untimely Objects of Richard III.’

23 November Dr Susanne Hakenbeck (Archaeology)

‘From Walhalla to Wagner (and back again): images of a Germanic past in Bavarian nationalism.’

7 December Dr Nicholas Karn (CMRC: History)

‘Law and archaism from the twelfth century to the nineteenth: the Leges Henrici Primi and its readers.’

11 January Professor Edward Chaney (Solent)

‘The Collector Earl of Arundel and the Obelisk of Domitian’

Exeter Medieval Seminar programme (Semester 1)

Centre for Medieval Studies

EXETER MEDIEVAL SEMINAR

Term 1, 2009–10

Tuesdays 4–5.30 p.m.

Queen’s Building MR3

 

20 Oct Professor Simon Barton (Dept of History)

The Legend of the Hundred Maidens: Sexual Politics and Religious Identity in Medieval Iberia

10 Nov

Edward Mullins (Dept of History)

Using Cognitive Science to Think about the Twelfth Century: Revisiting the Individual in Twelfth-Century Latin Texts

24 Nov Barbara Mosse (Dept of English)

The Monk of Farne: A Fourteenth-Century Hermit and his Meditations

8 Dec Professor Nigel Morgan (Corpus Christi, Camb.)

Exeter Use and Sarum Use

Wine afterwards

contact: Elliot Kendall

A Game at Chess with the Renaissance Reading Group (Today)

A reminder that Renaissance Reading Group will be meeting at 4 p.m. today in the Senior Common Room, Queens. The text up for discussion is A Game At Chess. The group will reconvene at the White Hart at 8 p.m. for drinks.

Exeter Centre for Early Modern Studies Seminar Series, 2009-10

The Exeter Early Modern Seminar 2009-10

The seminar meets on Wednesdays at 4pm, in Amory 417. It will be video-linked to the Cornwall Campus. The seminar will be followed by drinks.

Semester 1

14 October      Philip Schwyzer (English)

Trophies, Traces, Relics and Props: The Untimely Objects of Richard III

28 October      Steve Hindle (University of Warwick)

Lord and Tenant in Late Seventeenth-Century Warwickshire: The Case of Sir Richard Newdigate of Arbury, c.1678-1710

4 November      Mini-colloquium

Jo Esra (English, Cornwall campus): Truro’s Phippen Memorial: ‘a Small Monument of Great Mercy’, or, a Narrative of Religious Infidelity?

Christopher Stokes (English): A Poetics of Tears in John Donne

Andy McInnes (English): Pricks, Plenipotentiaries and Pornography: The Sexual / Textual Politics of James Gillray’s Graphic Satire

18 November     Tom Wynn (French)

Mythology and Pornotopia in eighteenth-century French Erotic theatre

9 December      Liz Tingle (University of Plymouth)

Purgatory at the Ends of the Earth: The Destiny of Souls in Counter Reformation Brittany

Semester 2

20 January      Ed Paleit (English)

‘When Roman Liberty opprest should dy’: Romano-English Politics and the Crisis of the late 1620s

3 February      Sjoerd Levelt (The Warburg Institute)

Holland’s Medieval History in the Early Modern Period

17 February      Isabelle Charmantier (History, Exeter)

Writing on Ornithology in the Seventeenth Century: Faultrier’s Traitte des Oyseaux

3 March      Sarah Toulalan (History)

Child Sexual Abuse in Early Modern England

17 March      To be confirmed

Examination Term

5 May      Mini-Colloquium on ‘Print Culture in Elizabethan England’

Lee Durbin (English): Bibliophiles and Private Libraries: Public versus Private Knowledge

Daniel Cattell (English): ‘I am a scribbled form’: Shakespeare’s King John and Catholic-Protestant Polemic’

12 May      Susan Whyman

The Social Status and Identity of the Tucker Family, Stone Merchants of Weymouth, Dorset 1700-1800

Wednesday: Schwyzer on the Relics of Richard III

The Exeter Centre for Early Modern Studies seminar series 2009-10 kicks off next week, Wednesday 14 October, with a talk by Philip Schwyzer (Exeter, English):

“Trophies, Traces, Relics and Props: The Untimely Objects of Richard III.” 

Talks in the series take place on Wednesdays, 4pm, in Amory, and are followed by drinks.  The full programme will be posted shortly, here and on the CEMS website.

Renaissance Reading Group — New Year, New Website

The Exeter Renaissance Reading Group now has its own blog!  A link has been inserted on the right of the screen.  The convenors of the reading group for the coming year are Jem Bloomfield and Briony Frost.  First meeting coming up very soon, though the first text on the agenda will not be Marvell’s Rehearsal Transpros’d (as previously advertised), but A Game at Chess.  Hope to see many Cuppe readers there!