Bristol Early Modern Seminar Series

Here is the programme for the University of Bristol’s Renaissance/ Early Modern Seminar Series

Monday, 3 November
Ann Pasternak-Slater (St Annes Oxford)
‘Shoe-strings, hearts, and empires! Mysterious sympathy!’: Shakespeare’s Theatrical Icons.

Monday, 10 November
John Lyon (Bristol)
‘Too long for a play’: Shakespeare Beyond Page and Stage

Tuesday, 18 November
Jenny Mayhew (Bristol)
Time-Telling and Death-Watching in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

Tuesday, 13 January
Gillian Austen (Bristol)
Title: TBA

All seminars begin at 4.30 in Room G-4, 3-5 Woodland Rd

CFP: APPOSITIONS, Volume 2

APPOSITIONS: Studies in Renaissance / Early Modern Literature and Culture

Volume Two: Dialogues & Exchanges (writers/readers/texts/fields)

*Call for Abstracts & Articles: APPOSITIONS: Studies in Renaissance / Early Modern Literature and Culture, http://appositions.blogspot.com/, seeks new work addressing the theme of dialogues & exchanges (writers/readers/texts/fields). How and why do literary texts emerge and change within and against fields of cultural production? Or, alternately: how and why do social forces or technologies shape distinctive modes and forms of literary art? Or, antithetically: how and why do literary works celebrate or challenge cultural narratives? Beyond such chiastic formulations, what other factors (e.g. audience, gender, identity, occasion, politics) also contribute to the dialogues & exchanges that literary texts invite and receive? Comparative, interdisciplinary, and trans-historical approaches are encouraged. APPOSITIONS is an electronic, peer-reviewed, international, annual conference and consequent digital journal for studies in Renaissance/early modern literature and culture. APPOSITIONS is an open-access, independently managed conference and journal. ISSN forthcoming.

*Conference Abstracts (200-words): November, 2008

*Conference Proposals (500-words): January, 2009

*E-Conference: February, 2009

*Manuscripts (articles): November, 2008-March, 2009

*Journal Publication: May, 2009

*Guidelines: APPOSITIONS seeks submissions simultaneously on both tracks: abstracts and proposals for the e-conference; and articles for Volume Two of the journal. Selected proposals/presentations from the e-conference will be solicited as completed articles for submission and review. Article manuscripts may also be submitted separately from the e-conference.

*Electronic Submissions: showard@du.edu. Submissions should be attached as a single .doc, .rtf, .pdf or .txt file. Visuals should be attached individually as .jpg, .gif or .bmp files. Please include the words “Appositions Submission” in the subject line of your message.

Society for Renaissance Studies: Public Lectures 2008-9

The Society for Renaissance Studies, 2008-2009

The Society is pleased to announce the following series of free public lectures at venues around the UK and Ireland. These will address the state of studies in the Renaissance across a range of disciplines. For further information, see the Society’s website.

‘The Instruments of Renaissance Science’
Wednesday 29 October 2008 at 5.00 pm

Jim Bennett (Director of the Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford)
Milburn House, University of Warwick
‘British Enthusiasm for the Italian Renaissance in the “Long” Nineteenth Century’
Tuesday 2 December 2008 at 5.00 pm

John Law (Department of History, Swansea University; Chair, Society for Renaissance Studies)
Research Beehive, Room 2.22, University of Newcastle
‘Renaissance Encounters: The Invention of Printing and the Crisis of the Renaissance’
Monday 2 February 2009 at 5.15 pm

Andrew Pettegree (Professor of Modern History, University of St Andrews)
Arts Faculty, Lecture Room 3, 17 Woodland Road, University of Bristol
‘Touching the Renaissance’
Friday 6 February 2009 at 7.00 pm

Evelyn Welch (Professor of Renaissance Studies, Queen Mary, University of London)
Hochhauser Auditorium, Sackler Centre, Victoria & Albert Museum, London
(The event is free but tickets must be pre-booked. Please visit http://www.vam.ac.uk)
‘The Renaissance in Global Context’
Thursday 26 February 2009

Peter Burke (Emeritus Professor of Cultural History, University of Cambridge)
Trinity College Dublin (for venue and start time, contact Dr Sarah Alyn Stacey, salynsta@tcd.ie)
‘Art or Material Culture? Reinterpreting the Renaissance Collections of the V&A’
Thursday 26 February 2009 at 5.00 pm

Peta Motture (Chief Curator, Victoria and Albert Museum’s Medieval and Renaissance Galleries Project)
Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester
‘Why Did the Renaissance Value Rhetoric?’
Wednesday 4 March 2009 at 5.00 pm

Sir Brian Vickers (Distinguished Senior Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study, University of London)
Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College, University of Cambridge
‘How Does the Archive Change the History of Renaissance Ideas? The Case of Montaigne’
Wednesday 6 May 2009 at 5.30 pm

Warren Boutcher (Reader in Renaissance Studies, Queen Mary, University of London)
Sydney Smith Lecture Room, The Medical School, Teviot Place, University of Edinburgh
‘Reading, Writing, and Travelling in the World of Columbus’
Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 5 pm

Barry Ife (Principal of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama)
St John’s College Auditorium, University of Oxford
‘Changing Patterns of Musical Dissemination in the Early Renaissance’
Tuesday 13 October 2009 at 7 pm

Margaret Bent (All Souls College, Oxford)
MALT Lecture Theatre, New Main Arts Building, College Road, Bangor University

Out next week: McDowell’s Poetry and Allegiance in the English Civil Wars

Nicholas McDowell’s book, Poetry and Allegiance in the English Civil Wars: Marvell and the Cause of Wit will be published in November by Oxford University Press.

This book is about the things which could unite, rather than divide, poets during the English Civil Wars: friendship, patronage relations, literary admiration, and anti-clericalism. The central figure is Andrew Marvell, renowned for his ‘ambivalent’ allegiance in the late 1640s. Little is known about Marvell’s associations in this period, when many of his best-known lyrics were composed. The London literary circle which formed in 1647 under the patronage of the wealthy royalist Thomas Stanley included ‘Cavalier’ friends of Marvell such as Richard Lovelace but also John Hall, a Parliamentarian propagandist inspired by reading Milton. Marvell is placed in the context of Stanley’s impressive circle of friends and their efforts to develop English lyric capability in the absence of traditional court patronage. By recovering the cultural values that were shared by Marvell and the like-minded men with whom he moved in the literary circles of post-war London, we are more likely to find the reasons for their decisions about political allegiance. By focusing on a circle of friends and associates we can also get a sense of how they communicated with and influenced one another through their verse. There are innovative readings of Milton’s sonnets and Lovelace’s lyric verse, while new light is shed on the origins and audience not only of Marvell’s early political poems, including the ‘Horatian Ode’, but lyrics such as ‘To His Coy Mistress’.

Nicholas McDowell is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English, University of Exeter.

Two Wednesday Reminders: Renaissance Reading Group + Schwyzer at SWEM

The early modern cuppe overfloweth this Wednesday, 29 October.

The next meeting of the Renaissance Reading Group will take place on Wednesday 29th October, in the Queen’s Building SCR, 4-5. The group will be discussing the first seventeen of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and the ever-controversial “A Lover’s Complaint.”

AND:

In the first meeting this year of the Southwest Early Modern Network, Dr Philip Schwyzer, University of Exeter, will give a paper entitled: ‘ “The handsomest man in the room”: Remembering Richard III in Shakespeare’s England’.  The talk will commence at 6.30pm at the Castle, Bath Spa Newton Park campus.

Tuesday: King on Confraternities and Urban Culture (Exeter Medieval Seminar)

EXETER MEDIEVAL SEMINAR

Tuesday, 28 October, 4pm (Queen’s Building, MR1)

Professor Pamela King (University of Bristol) will present the following paper:

‘Confraternities, Civic Shows, and the Rhetoric of Medieval Urban Culture: the case of Siena’s Palio’

Professor King is Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies of the University of Bristol. She is an interdisciplinary medievalist who works chiefly on late medieval and early Tudor theatre and drama, but also on manuscript studies, iconography, and cultural history as well as ‘canonical’ Middle English literature. She is also interested in the performance of pageantry, spectacle, processions and civic shows from the Middle Ages to the present, and these interests will be reflected in the paper she will deliver on Tuesday.

The paper will be followed by a drinks reception, to which you are cordially invited.

The Semester 1 programme for the Medieval Seminar Series is now available here.

Next Exeter Early Modern Seminar: Daybell on Women, Politics, and Domesticity

The first Early Modern Seminar for 2008-9 will take place this Wednesday 22 October at 4pm. Our speaker is Dr James Daybell, from the University of Plymouth. His paper is entitled: ‘Women, Politics and Domesticity: The Scribal Publication of Lady Rich’s Letter to Elizabeth I’

The seminar will take place in Amory, Room 417 – please note the change of venue from last year. This room is on the fourth floor of Amory: take the lift to the fourth floor and walk towards the back of the building. Refreshments will follow after the seminar.

Recently Published: Shakespeare and War

Shakespeare and War, a collection of essays edited by Ros King (Southampton) and Paul Franssen (Utrecht) has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan. It comprises essays on sixteenth-century ideas about warfare, Shakespearean dramaturgy, and performances of Shakespeare during times of war in Germany and Denmark, including first hand accounts of Shakespeare during the recent war in Bosnia/Yugoslavia, and cold-war Romania. Contributors from the west of the UK include King, Simon Barker (Gloucestershire) and R. Scott Fraser(UWE), as well as Helen Wilcox (Bangor), but there are essays from US, Australia and numerous countries in Europe.

Exeter Renaissance Reading Group: Sonnets, and a curious Complaint

The next meeting of the Renaissance Reading Group will take place on Wednesday 29th October, in the Queen’s Building SCR, 4-5. We will be discussing the first seventeen of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and “A Lover’s Complaint” (often produced in editions of The Sonnets). All are welcome, new members and old!

British Milton Seminar, 25 October

THE BRITISH MILTON SEMINAR
BMS 38
AUTUMN MEETING, 2008
Saturday 25 October 2008

Venue: In Birmingham Central Library (conference room 4 — not usual room) on Saturday 25 October 2008. There will be two sessions, from 11.00 am to 12.30 pm and from 2.00 pm to 4.00 pm

Programme:

(am) Neville Davies (Birmingham), ‘Celebrating Milton in 1908’;
Anne McLaren (Liverpool), ‘Fathers, sons and freedom in Areopagitica’

(pm) panel: The future of Milton studies — Noel Sugimura (Cambridge), Rosanna Cox (Kent), William Poole (Oxford); respondent: Gordon Campbell (Leicester).

The Library is situated conveniently close both to New Street Station and to large carparks. A map of central Birmingham is available on request. The seminar is open to academic and related staff and to postgraduate students, so do please draw it to the attention of others who may be interested.

Colleagues who may wish to use the Library collection while in Birmingham should note that the catalogue is now available online at
http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/libcat.

Please reply to Professor T N Corns, School of English, College of Arts and Humanities, University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 2DG; els009@bangor.ac.uk