Next up for SWEMN: Ellis on A Game at Chesse

The last SWEMN presentation of term will take place next Wednesday, 3rd December, starting at 6.30pm. Kate Ellis, who is a PhD student at Bath Spa, will be giving a paper on ‘Textual Underpinnings of A Game at Chesse.’ Her abstract follows, with directions to the event.

To ensure a sufficiency of wine on Wednesday, it would be helpful if you could drop a line to Tracey Hill if you are planning to come along.

Abstract

The circulation of oral and literate culture in Early Modern England has been the subject of much recent research. Drawing upon a variety of sources, including play texts, letters, pamphlets and other records, this paper will aim to show that theatre in the seventeenth century, particularly in 1620s and 1630s, provides an ideal medium through which to explore this circulation. Through a detailed consideration of Middleton’s 1624 play, A Game At Chess, I will focus primarily on the role of the audience in the dissemination of oral and literate culture. This paper will explore the ways in which the audience’s experience of, and response to, the King’s Men’s performance opened a dialogue between social boundaries, taking the play out of the Globe into a far wider political theatre, playing out scenes in settings as diverse as the Office of the Revels and the Spanish court. Through a network of communication, both oral and written, Middleton’s play prompted a discourse in which the ordinary London theatregoer occupied the same textual framework as the Spanish ambassador, exposing the oral and textual underpinnings of the Caroline stage as both a commercial enterprise and a vehicle for propaganda.

Directions and a map of the Newton Park campus are here.

We will meet in the Castle, room CE.G01 on the ground floor (yes, a real castle!). The nearest car park is next to Newton building (see map); directions to Newton Park by public transport are also on the BSU website.

Medieval Mediterranean Studies

In addition to the normal seminar programme of the Exeter Centre for Medieval Studies, this semester two seminars on medieval topics will be held at the Centre for Mediterranean Studies:

Tuesday 25 November (at 1 pm, Parker Moot Room, Amory Building)
Antonella Liuzzo Scorpo (Department of Modern Languages)
‘The King as Subject, Master and Model of Authority: The Case of Alfonso X of Castile’

Wednesday 10th December (at 5 pm, Parker Moot Room, Amory Building)
Dr Isabella Lazzarini (University of Molise, Italy)
‘A nearer Orient: Diplomatic Exchanges and Information Networks between the Italian Courts and the East in the Late Middle Ages (14th-15th centuries)’

Next week: Aebischer on Measure for Measure

In the next event in the CISSGE series, Dr Pascale Aebischer (Senior Lecturer in English, University of Exeter) will speak on:

“Silence and Rape in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure at the RSC, 1970-2006″

Wednesday 26 November, 4pm, LT7 1&2, Queen’s Building, University of Exeter.

Wednesday: Bloomfield on the Duchess of Malfi and the Spanish Match

Wednesdays can be days of feverish activity for Exeter’s early modernists….

This year’s programme of PhD talks begins tomorrow (Wednesday the 19th) with Jeremy Bloomfield presenting a paper on:

‘The Princess and the Duchess: The First Edition of Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi and the Spanish Match’

The talk will begin at 1pm in Margaret Rooms 1 and will last approximately 45 minutes with questions from those attending.

The PhD talks are designed to give the speakers time to present their ideas to an audience; to give the audience time to respond to the speakers and therefore aid them in their project; and also function as a way for the postgrad community to learn what others are up to. We hope to see you there.

Next Exeter Early Modern Seminar: Fusaro on English Seamen and Venetian Law

The next Early Modern Seminar will take place on Wednesday 19 November at 5pm in Amory, room 417 (please note variation from the usual time).Our speaker is Dr Maria Fusaro from History, and her paper is entitled:

‘Public Service and Private Trade in the Early Modern Mediterranean: English Seamen and the Venetian Courts of Law in the Seventeenth Century’.

Tomorrow: Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (+ drinks at the White Hart)

Exeter’s Renaissance Reading Group will be meeting tomorrow at 4-5 in the Queen’s Building SCR. We will be discussing Robert Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (printed in the anthology of English Renaissance Drama that most of us have). After the meeting we will be heading to The White Hart (South Street) for drinks. All are welcome!

Next up for SWEMN: Publicover on Poetic Geography in Antony and Cleopatra

The next meeting of the South West Early Modernist Network is next Wednesday, 19th November, starting at 6.30pm at Bath Spa University, Newton Park Campus. Laurence Publicover from the University of Bristol will be giving a paper entitled ‘‘His legs bestrid the ocean’: Poetic geography in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra and Massinger’s The Renegado’.

Abstract: in the early modern period a number of Christian Europeans elected to convert to Islam and live on the North African coast. This paper will explore how  Shakespeare and Massinger engage, indirectly, with anxieties about Englishmen who had ‘turned Turk’. The geographic structures employed by the playwrights, it will argue, function as a framework within which the unruly desires of their respective heroes can be examined.

Wine will be served after Laurence’s paper, and we will then be going on to eat in a Bath pub; you are welcome to join us.

Directions and a map of the campus are here. We will meet in the Castle, room CE.G01 on the ground floor (yes, a real castle!). The nearest car park is next to Newton building (see map); directions to Newton Park by public transport are also on the BSU website.

Next Exeter Early Modern Seminar: Knight on Female Support Networks in Renaissance Florence

The next Exeter Early Modern Seminar will take place on Wednesday 5 November (4pm in Amory 417). 

Suzy Knight (QMUL) will be speaking on ‘The Circulation of Birthing Amulets amongst Renaissance Florentine Women: Evidence of Female Support Networks in the Early Modern Period’.

Wine and juice will be served after the seminar.