Female Fury and the Masculine Spirit of Vengeance:
Revenge and Gender from Classical to Early Modern Literature
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Professor Alison Findlay
Professor Edith Hall
5-6 September 2012, University of Bristol, UK
Revenge is often thought of as a quintessentially masculine activity, set in a martial world of blood feuds and patriarchal codes of honour. However, the quest for vengeance can also be portrayed as intensifying passionate feelings traditionally thought of as feminine.
The Shakespeare Institute Review is a new online academic journal, which is funded by the University of Birmingham College of Arts and Law. It is run by four research students at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, UK.
Students at this institution, and on other postgraduate Shakespeare programmes, are invited and encouraged to contribute short papers for publication. Each issue of the journal will be themed.
We thought it exhilaratingly inappropriate, and so irresistible, to signal the birth of this journal with an issue looking at death.
Students are encouraged to submit papers, between 1,500 and 2,500 words, on topics relating to death, mortality and religion in Shakespeare’s plays, or elsewhere in the Early Modern period.
Possible topics might include, but are not restricted to:
Suggestions of other topics will be warmly received.
Papers should be submitted to shakesreview@gmail.com, with a deadline of 20 May 2012.
All submissions will be reviewed by the editorial board, and those submissions that are selected will be published in our first online issue. Please contact us for further information.
The latest issue of Shakespeare contains an article by Prof Richard Wilson (Cardiff University).
An English text of Carl Schmitt’s Hamlet or Hecuba makes it vital to question the turn from French theory to Germany philosophy in Shakespeare studies, given a Left flirtation with Schmitt’s Political Theology begun by Walter Benjamin. The Marxist critic’s fascination with fascism was decried by Terry Eagleton as a theoretical error. So it is ironic that Eagleton’s William Shakespeare was driven by the same Schmittian idea that “sovereign is he who decides the exception” in language or law. Eagleton backtracked on its cult of violence after 9/11. But 25 years on, his introduction to the plays shows the danger of using Shakespeare to decide necessary violence, not least in its own exceptional force of argument. This article thus considers Eagleton’s book to be an early example of the coincidence of opposites that currently attracts Shakespeareans to dubious existentialist notions of decision and risk.
Those with a university login can access the article here.
Find out about private subscription to the journal here.
This just in from Dublin:
22-23 November 2012
University College Dublin and Marsh’s Library
Call for papers
The significance of classical writing in early modern European culture hardly needs stating, and although the classical inheritance signalled by the periodising term ‘Renaissance’ has partially been obscured by the more proleptic terms of the ‘early modern’, scholars rightly continue to emphasise the contribution of particular classical authors, texts and models to European Renaissance writing and thought. The vast majority of the authors, texts and models currently studied, however, are those which take ancient Greece and/or Rome (or territories under their sometime control) as their primary focus or purview. Concurrently, assumptions of the fixity or autochthony of ‘Europe’ and the ‘European Renaissance’ have come under pressure from work that emphasises the cross-cultural exchanges, encounters and traffic between ‘Europe’ and ‘the East’ during the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But in neglecting sixteenth and seventeenth-century European interests in classical writings on regions and states such as Persia, Assyria and Scythia, we are missing a vital piece of the puzzle. Misrepresenting the range and modulations of early modern classical interests, we allow the putative orientalising dichotomy of a ‘barbarian’ Eastern Other to ‘Europe’ to remain a silent, toxic presence in scholarship of the early modern period. Settings such as Lydia, Persia, Scythia, Assyria or Cimmeria were as much a part of the early modern imagination as Rome, Troy, Carthage, Delphi or Latium. In his Defence of Ryme, Samuel Daniel reminded English readers that ‘We must not thinke, but that there were Scipioes, Cæsars, Catoes and Pompeies, born elsewhere then at Rome, the rest of the world hath euer had them in the same degree of nature, though not of state. And it is our weakenesse that makes vs mistake, or misconceiue in these delineations of men the true figure of their worth.’
This conference aims to restore the visibility and significance of classical writings on the ancient Near East in early modern European literary culture, to complicate our understanding of the ‘Renaissance’ values that emerged out of the engagement with the classical legacy, and to bridge the gap between the theoretical models of the contemporary and classical engagements between Europe and the East in the early modern period.
Plenary speakers include Neil Rhodes (University of St Andrew’s), Edith Hall (King’s College, London) and Noreen Humble (University of Calgary).
The conference will also see the launch of ‘Reading East: Irish Sources and Resources’, a website introducing and cataloguing a selection of the early printed book holdings of Dublin’s extraordinarily rich research libraries, including Marsh’s Library, the Chester Beatty Library, the Edward Worth Library, and the UCD and Trinity College Libraries.
We welcome papers on any aspect of the early modern response to the Near Eastern interests of classical antiquity, and particularly papers that examine texts held at Dublin research libraries.
Topics may include, but are not confined to, to the following:
Please send abstracts of 300-400 words, together with a brief bio, to the organisers, Dr Jane Grogan (jane.grogan@ucd.ie) and Dr Marina Ansaldo (marina.ansaldo@ucd.ie) by 15 July 2012.
University College Cork, Ireland
School: School of English
Contract Type: Permanent Whole-Time
Job Type: Academic
Salary: €31,821 – €51,270
The School of English wishes to appoint a Lecturer in Shakespeare Studies, from 1 September 2012.
The School seeks a scholar and critic with a primary research focus on Shakespeare studies. The successful applicant will have a doctorate, an established research profile in the field, and the capacity to bring dynamic development to the School’s teaching and research on Shakespeare at all levels. S/he will have strong and varied experience in university teaching, and will be able to teach and supervise more broadly in early modern literature and culture. The School does not seek at this time to appoint a drama-in-performance specialist. The appointee will contribute to the School’s undergraduate and postgraduate work by convening and sharing lecture-modules, teaching seminar groups, and supervising MA and PhD students on Shakespeare and related topics. A strong contribution to the research culture of the School will be expected. A record of applications for external research funding, commensurate with the experience of the applicant, will be an advantage, as will the capacity and willingness to network and co-develop collaborative research projects.
Candidates with a serious interest in one or more of the following may gain an advantage:
The reception of Shakespeare in later literature and culture, including film and other media; Shakespeare and theory (e.g. psychoanalysis, new historicism, post-structuralism, feminism); Ethnicities and/or sexualities in Shakespeare studies; Digital-humanities approaches in Shakespeare and early-modern studies; Shakespeare and the printed book
Closing date: 5pm, Wednesday 6th June 2012
http://www.ucc.ie/en/hr/vacancies/academic/full-details-153571-en.html
Dear friends (old, new, and soon-to-be),
As a little bank holiday treat, we’re extending registration to Friday 11 May, so anyone who missed the first deadline can send in their abstracts and forms without paying late fees.
Richard III tickets are going fast, so even though auditors have until May 25, it’s a good idea to reserve a spot sooner than later!
Shakespeare et les arts de la table has now been published online here. The collection includes an essay by Johann Gregory (Cardiff University) on “visualising expectations as a matter of taste”, following research in Cardiff University’s Special Collections and Archives (SCOLAR) into Healthy Reading 1590-1690.
‘Arts of the table are not far removed from performing arts. The table is a stage. It has its actors, its backstage, its sets, its props, its rules, its mises en scène, its lighting and musical effects. In English, “boards” can refer both to a table and a stage — either of which can indifferently be designated by “tréteaux” (trestles) in French. The early modern stage abundantly feeds on this spectacular and festive matter….
Ken Albala’s and Gilly Lehmann’s papers are mouth-watering appetizers to this collection. They show the existence of a “culinary style” in Elizabethan times through recipes, ingredients and food metaphors. David B. Goldstein, Johann Gregory and Tobias Döring analyse Shakespeare’s plays through a culinary prism: eating, digesting/bloating and belching. Natalia Brzozowska et Imke Pannen study the perversion of the arts of the table in some bloody banquets. Finally, Joanne Vine’s essay questions the lack of scenes representing eating and drinking in Ben Jonson’s plays for the Children of the Revels, which is particularly uncommon for such a “bon vivant”.’ Read the rest of the foreword here.
Professor Brian Cummings
Tuesday 1 May 2012, 6.00pm
The British Academy, 10-11 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH
Religion is the last great mystery of Shakespeare studies. For most of the last century he was regarded as a quintessentially secular author, and attributing religious belief to him was a kind of blasphemy. In the past few years a counter-argument has been made, associating Shakespeare with the recusant Catholicism of Elizabethan England. Such
issues have run aground in the frustrating remains of his personal biography. This lecture asks whether we could take a different approach to the legacy of the Reformation in Shakespeare. Rather than seeking the miasma of individual faith as a key to dramatic meaning, it investigates instead the burden of religious change and controversy on fundamental questions of identity and the human body. Looking at a variety of different plays, it shows how the transformations in the rituals of everyday life are constantly present in the dynamic forces of Shakespeare’s theatre in performance.
About the Speaker
Brian Cummings is Professor of English at the University of Sussex and was founding Director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies, 2004-8. He was previously Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and has held visiting fellowships in California and in Munich. His books include The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace (OUP, 2002), and The Book of Common Prayer: the Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662 (OUP, 2011). Currently, he holds a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship for 2009-12, researching his next book, The Confessions of Shakespeare. In 2012 he will give the Clarendon Lectures at Oxford University on ‘Bibliophobia’.
Find out more here:
http://www.britac.ac.uk/events/2012/Cummings-shakespeare.cfm
There will also be a panel discussion on April 30th devoted to Ben Jonson: A Re-assessment – now fully booked.
A reminder just in from BritGrad:
We invite graduate students with interests in both Shakespeare and Renaissance studies to join us in June for the Fourteenth Annual British Graduate Conference.
The interdisciplinary conference provides a friendly but stimulating academic forum in which graduate students from all over the world can present their research and meet together in an active centre of Shakespeare research: Shakespeare’s home town of Stratford-upon-Avon. Undergraduate students in their final two years of study are also invited to attend the conference as auditors.
The conference will feature talks by Peter Holland (Notre Dame), Tiffany Stern (Oxford), Paul Menzer (Mary Baldwin), and Katherine Duncan-Jones (Oxford). Delegates also have the opportunity to attend the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Richard III, part of the World Shakespeare Festival, at a group-booking price. Lunch will be provided on each day, and we will be hosting a dance and a drinks reception for the delegates.
We invite abstracts of approximately 200 words for papers twenty minutes in length (3,000 words or less) on subjects relating to Shakespeare and Renaissance studies. Delegates wishing to give papers must register by Friday 4th May, 2012. Due to the growing success of this annual conference, we strongly encourage early registration to ensure a place on the conference programme.
http://britgrad.wordpress.com/
Download the pdf here:
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The Shakespeare’s Globe Henry V will be playing at Cardiff’s New Theatre: See here.
The Lisvane Players in Cardiff will have a special RSC Open Stages Shakespeare performance: See here.
And, finally, Eric Langley will be coming from Royal Holloway on Thursday (26th) to give a paper on “A Lucretian Comedy of Errors” for Cardiff University’s Research Seminar – MEMORI.
