1. Poetics and Prose theory in Early Modern English – York CREMS, 29 May 2013, Treehouse, Humanities Research Centre, University of York, 9.30-5.30.
2. The British Milton Seminar Autumn Meeting, 2013, Saturday 19 October.
3. Summer School: “Court Residences as Places of Exchange in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe” (II), Madrid, 4-14 July 2013.
4. Description of a proposed session at the RSA meeting March 27-29, 2014 in New York:  DID WOMEN ARTISTS HAVE A REFORMATION?
5. Call for Panels. Society for the Study of Early Modern Women will be sponsoring five panels for next year’s RSA meeting, March 27-29, 2014 in New York.

6. New York, NY, 27-29 March 2014, Early Modern Women Philosophers, Theologians, and Scientists. Organizers: Julie Campbell, Anne Larsen, and Diana Robin.

7. One-day workshop – ‘Describing, Analysing and Identifying Early Modern Handwriting: Methods and Issues’, T. S. Eliot Lecture Theatre, Merton College, Thursday 25 April, 9.15-4. Organized by the Centre for Early Modern Studies and Merton College History of the Book Group, with the co-operation of the Bodleian Library Centre for the Study of the Book.
8. Reading University, Early Modern Research Centre, ‘Academic Culture and the Culture of Academic Competitions in early Modern Europe’,  Friday 26 April 2013.
9. Two Conferences at UCL: Medieval Francophone Literary Culture Outside France is a two-day academic international conference to be held at University College London, 6-7 June 2013 and The Italian Angevins: Naples and Beyond is a one-day interdisciplinary conference, 5th June, focusing on the culture, history, and politics of the Angevin Regno, from 1266 to 1422.
10. Leonardo Da Vinci Society Annual Lecture, Alexander Marr, ‘Disingenuous Ingenuity in Renaissance Germany: The Case of Walter Hermann Ryff’, 10th May, 6pm, Kenneth Clark LT, Courtauld Institute, Somerset House.
11. Details of the 2013 Summer term programme for the Research Seminars. (All seminars are free /open to all and taking place at The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, WC2R 0RN London) 
12. Warburg Institute Events from April to June 2013. http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/mnemosyne/AnnualProgramme2012_13.pdf
13. Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in English Literature University of Roehampton -Department of English and Creative Writing (1.0 FTE) HR Ref No: HR64/13. Salary: £36,630 to £48,008 pa inc
14. Light, Colour, Veils – a conference to be held on 1^st June at The Courtauld Institute of Art.
15. Temporary Lecturer in English, 1500-1660 English, University of Southampton.

________________________________________________________

 1.

Poetics and Prose theory in Early Modern English – York CREMS

29 May 2013, Treehouse, Humanities Research Centre, University of York, 9.30-5.30

Open to all – entrance free and no registration required, but do email if you’re planning to attend.

10.00-10.45 Poetic Treatises in Early Modern England

• Gavin Alexander (Cambridge), The Proportions of English Poetics

10.45-11.30

• Hannah Leah Crummé (Kings College London) Theorizing English Rhetoric (Abraham Fraunce’s Arcadian Rhetorike and Fernando de Herrera)
• Michael Hetherington (Cambridge),  Remembering Lysias: The Coherence of the Text in Early Modern England

Coffee 11.30-12.00

 12.00-1.15 From Theory to Poetic Practice

• Hannah Crawforth (Kings College, London), Richard Willes’ Poetic Theory and Practice
• Micha Lazarus (Oxford), Sidney and Vettori’s Aristotle
• Louise Wilson (St Andrews), Theories of pleasure in early modern literary criticism

 Lunch, 1.15-2.15

 2.15-3.30

• Elizabeth Scott-Baumann (Kings College, London), A pause for thought?: Critical writing by women and men 1610-1660
• John Roe (York), ‘Besely seeking with a continuell chaunge’: the poetics of indeterminacy in Petrarch and Wyatt.

·         Katherine Acheson (University of Waterloo in Ontario), The “Way of Dichotomy”: Visual Rhetoric, Dichotomous Tables, and Paradise Lost

Coffee, 3.30-4.00

4.00-4.45 Prose Theory

• Florence Hazrat (Cambridge), Poesy, Plot and Parenthesis: Rhetorical Figures as Structural and Narrative Strategy in Early Modern Prose Writing
• Stuart Farley (St Andrews), The Extemporary Method in Early Modern English Prose

4.45-5.30

• Jenny Richards (Newcastle), Appealing to ‘the Physical Ear’: Thomas Nashe on Prose Style

Contact: kevin.killeen@york.ac.uk

Part of the Sir Thomas Browne Seminar: http://www.york.ac.uk/english/news-events/browne/

York CREMS: http://www.york.ac.uk/crems/

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 2.

THE BRITISH MILTON SEMINAR

AUTUMN MEETING, 2013

Saturday 19 October 2013

Sign up for email alerts at:

http://britishmiltonseminar.wordpress.com/

CALL FOR PAPERS

Venue: The Birmingham and Midland Institute on 19 October 2013.  There will be two sessions, from 11.00 am to 12.30 pm, and from 2.00 pm to 4.00 pm.

We currently intend that each session will have two papers (of approx. 25-30 minutes each), for which proposals are invited.

Please send proposals to Professor Thomas N. Corns no later than 23 August 2013.

Thomas N. Corns

Joint Convener

email:els009@bangor.ac.uk<mailto:els009@bangor.ac.uk>

~

For further information about the British Milton Seminar, please contact either:

Professor Thomas N. Corns (els009@bangor.ac.uk<mailto:els009@bangor.ac.uk>), or Dr Hugh Adlington (h.c.adlington@bham.ac.uk<mailto:h.c.adlington@bham.ac.uk>).

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3.

Summer School: “Court Residences as Places of Exchange in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe” (II)

Location: Madrid, with field trips to various castles and residences in central Spain.

Date: 4-14 July 2013.

 Organisation: PALATIUM and the Fundación Carlos de Amberes, with the collaboration of Patrimonio Nacional and the Casa de Velázquez.

Supervisors: Bernardo J. García García (Fundación Carlos de Amberes), José Luis Sancho (Patrimonio Nacional), Vanessa de Cruz Medina (Fundación Carlos de Amberes).

Deadline 5 May 2013

Details here:http://www.courtresidences.eu/index.php/events/summer-school/summer-school-madrid-2013/

 This is the second PALATIUM Summer School. The first PALATIUM Summer School was held in Utrecht, July 2012.

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4.

Description of a proposed session at the RSA meeting March 27-29, 2014 in New York

 DID WOMEN ARTISTS HAVE A REFORMATION?

Scholars across disciplines have amply demonstrated the role of women in spiritual reform, as writers, patrons (of artworks and religious orders), and in devotional practices.  Art-historical inquiry has recently turned to the involvement of some canonical artists in reform movements: women artists, however, seem absent from this discussion, despite their production of altarpieces and devotional images, as well as their connections with ecclesiastics.

This session seeks to explore women artists’ engagement with religious issues.  Is this a promising line of inquiry?  Did women tackle specific theological matters in their art?  Do they express the thoughts of a patron or religious community?  Are they motivated, moreover, by personal sentiments?  Did they align themselves with any specific currents within the Reform?  Do we have evidence of women artists attempting a specifically gendered devotion?  Paper proposals that speak to these or similar issues are invited.

Please send a paper title; an abstract (150-word maximum); keywords; and a brief curriculum vitae (300-word maximum) to Sheila ffolliott  sffollio@gmu.edu  by the end of May 2013. 

Please circulate to others whom you might think interested.

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5.

The Society for the Study of Early Modern Women will be sponsoring five panels for next year’s RSA meeting, March 27-29, 2014 in New York.  Those interested in submitting a panel for consideration will need to send the following:  organizer’s contact information, panel title, panel description, panel participants & chair, abstracts for individual papers (150-word maximum) as well as single page curriculum vitae for each participant to Megan Matchinske, Vice President SSEMW (matchin@email.unc.edu).

Deadline May 10, 2013.

Please feel free to circulate this call too others whom you believe might be interested.

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6.

Renaissance Society of America

Call for Papers

New York, NY, 27-29 March 2014

Early Modern Women Philosophers, Theologians, and Scientists

Organizers: Julie Campbell, Anne Larsen, and Diana Robin

 We would like to propose a series of panels on women’s participation in the areas of philosophy, theology, and science (natural philosophy) in the early modern period.

As more information comes to light about women’s participation in philosophical debates, activities involving religion and religious controversy, and their engagement in natural philosophy during the early modern period, it becomes clear that we have much to learn about the women who incorporated such interests into their lives, and, in some cases, dedicated their lives to such pursuits, whether in convents or secular society.

 From the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, from Italian humanists such as Laura Cereta, Ippolita Sforza, and Cassandra Fedele, to the German reformer Katharina Schutz Zell, to French and Dutch savantes such as Marie de Gournay and Anna Maria van Schurman, to French salonnières whose salons were in large part dedicated to politics, religion, and natural philosophy, such as the Vicomtesse d’Auchy, Mme de Loges, Mme de la Sablière, and Mme Deshoulières, to English women engaged in protestant or recusant causes, such as Mary Sidney’s work on the Psalms, Anne Vaughan Locke’s engagement in Calvinism, Gertrude More, Mary Ward, and Elizabeth Cary’s recusant writings, and Margaret Cavendish’s pursuit of natural philosophy, we can see how women were critically involved in these areas of interest.

 How were such women accepted or rejected in the contexts of their activities? What means of participation did they utilize—writing, conversation, oratory, experimentation?  Where do recipes and medical experimentation intersect? What other figures have work that has been “lost” and only recently recovered in these critical areas of early modern history? Where did natural philosophy and religion intersect for such women? What sorts of educations enabled such women to participate in these areas?

Please send abstracts of no more than 150 words and a one-page C.V. by Monday 6 May, by email attachment, to each of the following:

Julie D. Campbell                                                        Diana Robin

Professor of English                                                    Scholar-in-Residence, Newberry Library

Eastern Illinois University                                          Diana.robin@rcn.com

jdcampbell@eiu.edu

 Anne R. Larsen

Professor of French

Hope College

alarsen@hope.edu

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7.

Describing, Analysing and Identifying Early Modern Handwriting: Methods and Issues

T. S. Eliot Lecture Theatre, Merton College, Thursday 25 April, 9.15-4. Organized by the Centre for Early Modern Studies and Merton College History of the Book Group, with the co-operation of the Bodleian Library Centre for the Study of the Book.

This one-day workshop will bring together leading early modern scholars, palaeographers and digital humanities experts from the UK, the USA, France and Italy to discuss current scholarly approaches to the description of early modern English handwriting and to explore the potential for the use of digital technologies in future collaborative work.

Although the past twenty years have seen a rapid growth in scholarship on early modern English manuscripts, the study of handwriting in the period still seems to be in its infancy. Methods of describing, distinguishing and identifying hands differ from scholar to scholar and, although the work of individual early modernists is often based on very substantial unarticulated ‘tacit knowledge’ about the dating and differentiation of script styles, little detailed work on the topic has been published. Most of the scholarship in the area focuses, in an ad hoc way, on high-status manuscripts and on the identification of hands associated with major figures. The workshop will explore the potential for future collaboration on more comprehensive and systematic ways of understanding the variation between different hands in the period. and specifically the possibilities for a new project which will aim to produce substantial publicly-available material mapping key elements in the development of English handwriting between 1500 and 1700.

There will be four sessions. Speakers in the first session will describe some of the challenges currently facing scholars working on early modern English handwriting. New ways of addressing these challenges will be described by the speakers in the second session, all of whom are involved in research applying digital technologies to palaeography. In the final formal session, a distinguished panel will discuss specific samples of early modern handwriting. Following the main sessions there will be a planning meeting to discuss potential funding bids, which will be open to any interested parties.

Registration here
Cost: £20, graduates £15

Draft Programme – subject to revision

9.15-9.30 Registration

9.30 Welcome
David Norbrook (CEMS), Julia Walworth (Librarian, Merton College)

9.35-10.45 Problems
Chair: Colin Burrow (Oxford)

Early Modern Handwriting in Theory and Practice
Jonathan Gibson (Open University)

From Hands to Heads: Chasing Elizabeth I’s Scribes
Carlo M. Bajetta (Aosta)

English or French hands? The Case of Queen Elizabeth I’s Letters in French
Guillaume Coatalen (Cergy-Pontoise)

10.45-11.00 Tea and coffee

11.00-12.30 Solutions
Chair: Daniel Wakelin (Oxford)

Forensic Handwriting Analysis
Tom Davis (Birmingham)

Digital Alphabets and Early Modern Hand Identification
Steven W. May (Sheffield)

Graphetic profiling and scribal identification
Simon Horobin (Oxford)

‘I saw it on CSI…’: Forming Digital Technology for Humanities Research
Julia Craig-McFeely (Oxford)

12.30-1.30 Lunch

1.30-2.45 Round Table
Chair: Gabriel Heaton (Sotheby’s)

Peter Beal (Institute of English Studies, London)
William Poole (Oxford)
Heather Wolfe (Folger Shakespeare Library)
Henry Woudhuysen (Oxford)

2.45-3.00 Tea and coffee

3.00-4.00 Open project planning meeting
Chair: Giles Bergel (Oxford)

The workshop has been timed so that delegates can also attend one of Professor Richard Beadle’s Lyell Lectures, ‘Medieval English Literary Autographs 1: Fugitive Pieces’, in the same venue at 5pm.

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8.

Early Modern Research Centre

Academic Culture and the Culture of Academic Competitions in early Modern Europe

Friday 26 April 2013

10.30-10.45 Coffee & Registration

10.45-12.45 Session 1 (Chair: Dr Esther Mijers, University of Reading)

Dr Arjan van Dixhoorn (University of Ghent), ‘Towards a Cultural History of Literary Contest: the Case of the early Modern Low Countries’

Dr Lisa Sampson (University of Reading), ‘Amateurs Meet Professionals: Theatrical Activities in the Italian Academies’

Dr Hannah Williams (University of Oxford), ‘Le Brun vs Mignard / Academy vs Guild’

12.45-14.00 Lunch

14.00-15.30 Session 2 (Chair: Professor Joel Felix, University of Reading)

Dr Jeremy Caradonna (University of Alberta), ‘Counter-Enlightenment Reconsidered: The Example of Academic Prize Contests in Eighteenth-Century France’

Professor Allan Potofsky (University of Paris-Diderot), ‘How Revolutionary Were the French

Revolution’s Urban Planning Concours?’

15.30-16.00 Tea

16.00-17.00 Presentations

Dr Mark Curran (Queen Mary College), ‘The Republic of Books: Prizes, Protestant Enlightenment and Publishing in pre-Revolutionary Europe’

Dr Simone Testa (Royal Holloway), ‘The Italian Academies and their networks: collaboration or confrontation?’

17.00-17.45 Round Table & Closing comments

Professor Laurence Brockliss (University of Oxford)

 For the booking form go to: http://www.reading.ac.uk/web/FILES/EMRC/Academic_Culture_Booking_Form.pdf

Or contact Jan Cox: j.f.cox@reading.ac.uk

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9.

Two Conferences at UCL:

Medieval Francophone Literary Culture Outside France is a two-day academic international conference to be held at University College London, 6-7 June 2013. In nine sessions, we will address the research questions set by the AHRC-funded MFLCOF-project, thus investigating how francophone literary texts travelled across Europe (the Low Countries, the British Isles, the Mediterranean) and beyond (the Crusader Kingdoms in the Holy Land). Particular focus will be on the period between the twelfth and the fifteenth century. Keynote speakers are Dr. Frank Brandsma (Universiteit Utrecht) and Prof. Keith Busby (University of Wisconsin-Madison). Further information: http://www.medievalfrancophone.ac.uk/2013-conference/

Please register before 29 May d.schoenaers@ucl.ac.uk (conference fees: £15 student / lower waged; £35 waged)

The Italian Angevins: Naples and Beyond is a one-day interdisciplinary conference, focusing on the culture, history, and politics of the Angevin Regno, from 1266 to 1422. Complementing the 2013 Boccaccio Septcentenary, and immediately preceding this year’s Medieval Francophone Literary Culture Outside France conference, we anticipate that this event will stimulate much lively discussion among scholars of diverse disciplinary interests. The keynote address will be given by Marilynn Desmond (Cambridge University). Further information: http://italianangevins2013.wordpress.com/

Please register before 29 May e.cullen.11@ucl.ac.uk (attendance is free of charge)

Additionally, we would like to draw your attention to the final seminar in our 2012-2013 MFLCOF seminar series to be held 2 May (5.30 PM) at King’s College London  (Strand Campus, K2.29, Council Room). Prof. Remco Sleiderink (HUB,Brussels)  will be talking about ‘The Ring of Hope. Guillaume de Machaut’s Remède de Fortune and the reception of French literature in the Low Countries in the 2nd half of the 14th century’. This session is co-sponsored by CLAMS.

Best wishes

 Dirk Schoenaers

University College London

Medieval Francophone Literary Culture Outside France

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10.

 ANNUAL
LECTURE
2013
Friday
10 May 2013
6.00 pm
At the
Kenneth Clark
Lecture Theatre
Courtauld Institute of Art
Somerset House
The Strand, London
Admission is free
All are welcome

Dr Alexander Marr
(University of Cambridge)

The Leonardo da Vinci Society

Disingenuous Ingenuity in
Renaissance Germany: The Case of
Walther Hermann Ryff

Dr Marr will discuss Walther Ryff and the imago contrafacta in relation to
treatises on anatomy, medicine and the mechanical arts. Especially at issue
will be Ryff’s ‘disingenuous ingenuity’ in his pillaging and reworking of
others’ verbal and visual matter, with additional interest in his appropriation
of the legacy of Durer in 1540s Nuremberg.

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11.

Please find below details of the 2013 Summer term programme for the Research Seminars. (All seminars are free /open to all and taking place at The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, WC2R 0RN London)                                               

EARLY MODERN

Monday, 29 April – Katrin Seyler (Andrew W Mellon Foundation / Research Forum Postdoctoral Fellow –  Mellon MA): Making Knowledge in the Republic of Tools – the Mindscape of Early-Modern Journeyman Image-Makers. 6.00pm, Research Forum South Room

Joint MEDIEVAL /RENAISSANCE WORK-IN-PROGRESS

Wednesday, 24 April – Dr Stella Panayotova (Fitzwilliam Museum): Illuminated Manuscripts: Art and Science. 5.30pm, Research Forum South Room

RENAISSANCE

Wednesday, 15 May – Geoff Nuttall (The Courtauld Institute of Art): Paolo Guinigi and Palla Strozzi: Lucchese Influence in Early Renaissance Florence. 5.30pm, Research Forum South Room

MEDIEVAL WORK-IN-PROGRESS

Wednesday, 22 May – Dr Robert Mills (University College London): Medieval Art and the Question of the Animal. 5.30pm, Research Forum South Room

Joint MEDIEVAL /RENAISSANCE WORK-IN-PROGRESS/Giotto’s O

Wednesday, 12 June – Professor Bram Kempers (University of Amsterdam): Duccio’s Maestà: Florence, Siena, Assisi and Rome. 5.30pm, Research Forum South Room

 All seminars are free and open to all

Further information : http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/researchforum/calendar.shtml

Research Forum

The Courtauld Institute of Art

Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN

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12.

Warburg Institute from April to June 2013. We have an exciting and varied range of conferences, lectures and seminars between now and the end of the academic year.

 

The full events programme is available at: http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/mnemosyne/AnnualProgramme2012_13.pdf  

Listed below are just a few of the conferences taking place:

• 18 May 2013 – On the Peak of Darkness: From the Abyss to the Light, with Dante
• 20 May 2013 – Classifying Content – Photographic Collections and Theories of Thematic Ordering (The Kress Foundation has made available funds to assist with the travel expenses of employees of Photographic Collections in the USA wishing to attend this conference – to apply email: jane.ferguson@sas.ac.uk)
• 23 – 24 May 2013 – The Afterlife of Plutarch
• 31 May – 1 June 2013 – The Place of Hell: Topographies, Structures, Genealogies
• 14 – 15 June 2013 – The Alphabet of Nature and the Idols of the Market – Bacon on Languages, Natural and Human

Further details about all our events are available on our website at: http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/nc/events/

We would be grateful if you could display the Warburg programme on department notice boards and/or forward this email to any colleagues and students who you think may be interested in our events.

Warburg Institute MAs

We would also like to draw your attention to our new MA in Art History, Curatorship and Renaissance Culture which will take its first students in 2013-14 and is being offered jointly by the Warburg Institute and the National Gallery. The purpose of the programme is to provide high level linguistic, archive and research skills for a new generation of academic art historians and museum curators. The art historical and scholarly traditions of the Warburg Institute will be linked to the practical experience and skills of the National Gallery to provide training which will equip students either as academic art historians with serious insight into the behind the scenes working of a great museum or as curators with the research skills necessary for high-level museum work.

Further information on the new MA and on our existing MA in Cultural and Intellectual History 1300 – 1650 is available at: http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/graduate-studies/  Places are still available on both courses and we would be grateful if you could pass this information on to any of your colleagues or students who might be interested.

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13.

Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in English Literature University of Roehampton -Department of English and Creative Writing

 (1.0 FTE)

HR Ref No: HR64/13

 Salary: £36,630 to £48,008 pa inc

The Department of English and Creative Writing, comprising programmes in English Literature, Children’s Literature and Creative Writing, is well respected for its research and teaching excellence. This post is part of a period of strategic renewal, which has already seen five new appointments, seeking to consolidate our reputation for both traditional excellence and innovation. The successful post holder will join current colleagues in developing and extending our research and teaching profile in any aspect of English Literature from the Early Modern to the present.

We are seeking to appoint a full-time, without term Lecturer/Senior Lecturer. The department is particularly keen to hear from candidates who would complement existing research strengths in Early Modern, Romanticism, Victorian, Twentieth-Century, American Literature, and Children’s Literature. You will need to have completed a PhD or equivalent with a profile of high quality research publications in your discipline and a clear research plan. The appointee will be expected to help build the excellent research reputation of the Department of English and Creative Writing by engaging in high quality research.

The University of Roehampton is set on a beautiful, traditional campus in south-west London. The University provides its students with exceptional facilities, high quality teaching and a close-knit, collegiate experience.

 Roehampton has a diverse student body and a cosmopolitan outlook, with students from over 130 countries. The University is committed to a strong research culture, with two of its departments ranked the best in the country. Roehampton is on an ambitious trajectory and seeks to build on its increasing popularity by developing an innovative and distinctive portfolio.

Please note that CVs alone will not be considered.

Closing date, no later than 5.00pm: Monday 6 May 2013

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14.

Please find below details of:

Light, Colour, Veils – a conference to be held on 1^st June at The Courtauld Institute of Art.

Ticket/entry details: £16 (£11 students, Courtauld staff and concessions): Book online here: http://courtauld-institute.digitalmuseum.co.uk

Further information here: http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/researchforum/events/2013/summer/jun01_LightColourVeils.shtml

With best wishes,

Research Forum

The Courtauld Institute of Art

Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN

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15.

 

https://www.jobs.soton.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx?ref=228613F4

Temporary Lecturer in English, 1500-1660 English

Location:  Avenue Campus

Salary:   £27,854 to £31,331

Full Time Fixed Term

Closing Date:   Wednesday 29 May 2013

Interview Date:   To be confirmed

Reference:  228613F4

Fixed term for 1 year

Following the award of a Leverhulme Research Fellowship to Dr Alice Hunt, the Department of English invites applications for the post of a Lecturer in English. We are looking for an outstanding early career academic, who has published high quality research, and can demonstrate an excellent track record in teaching. The appointment is for one year, full time, and it is anticipated that the successful candidate will take up the post on 1 August 2013.

The Department of English at the University of Southampton demonstrates excellence in all periods of English Literature, and includes strengths in Creative Writing, Film, and Digital Humanities. We have a dynamic and collaborative research culture, both within and across periods, and enjoy strong interdisciplinary links with other departments in the Faculty of Humanities and the wider university. We have an excellent reputation for teaching, valuing both research-led teaching and teaching-led research, and are committed to knowledge exchange and public engagement.

You will possess an excellent honours degree, a completed doctorate in the literature, history, and culture of the Early Modern period, and an eagerness to contribute to the intellectual and creative culture of the department. An interest in Shakespeare and Early Modern drama would be an advantage.

 Further information about the department and the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Culture can be found atwww.soton.ac.uk/English.

I nformal enquiries may be made to Professor Ros King, Head of Department (r.king@soton.ac.uk).

 The closing date for applications is Wednesday 29 May 2013. Please apply throughwww.jobs.soton.ac.uk. Please quote vacancy reference number 228613F4 on all correspondence.

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Below are some shorts posts by students studying at UCL for the MA in Early Modern Studies, who were treated to a scintillating private viewing with one of the exhibition’s curators. Our sincerest thanks to Hanae for setting it up and Lucy for giving up so much of her time to take us round, it was truly inspirational in every way.

 

Hangynge aboute the walles
Clothes of golde and palles,
Arras of ryche aray,
Fresshe as flours in May
[…] With triumphes of Cesar,
And of Pompeyus war,
Of renowne and of fame
By them to get a name
Nowe all the worlde stares,
How they ryde in goodly chares,
Conueyed by olyphantes,
With lauryat garlantes,
And by vnycornes
With their semely hornes ;
Vpon these beestes rydynge,

Skelton’s description serves as a written reproduction of a tapestry which is already a visual imitation of a poem, and which itself makes several changes to the image. The elephants drawing the chariot recall those of Roman triumphs, but they are not mentioned by Petrarch. I Trionfi only describes a chariot in the first Triumph, that of Love, but by the mid-fifteenth century Florentine artists were depicting each triumph with a chariot and, during the second half of the century, this model was common in Italian manuscripts and engravings. This tapestry series owned by Wolsey is unique in attributing two chariots to each scene, departing further from the Petrarchan source. Here, a piece of visual art both alters and propagates a literary emblem, and leads to an additional written description of that piece of art.

 

 Ulrich Apt the Elder, Portrait of a Man and his Wife, 1512 and Lucas Cranach, Lucretia, 1530

What struck me most in this excellent exhibition was not a single painting but two in close proximity. In a fairly narrow section of one of the rooms, “Portrait of a Man and His Wife 1512” by Ulrich Apt the Elder hangs directly opposite “Lucretia” by Lucas Cranach the Elder. The former is a marriage portrait of a mature bourgeois couple, of no great beauty; they are realistically portrayed in everyday clothing, and the picture has a domestic air. This is contrasted with the directly facing depiction of Lucretia, the virtuous wife of a Roman nobleman, who was blackmailed and raped by Sextus Tarquinius and, shamed by her loss of honour, is about to stab herself  to death. She holds the point of the dagger against her naked breast. She is dressed in a sumptuous gown and headdress, the rich colours of which contrast with the almost drab domesticity of the couple opposite. Lucretia’s air of childlike innocence and the dagger held against her adolescent breast combine to create a highly erotic image. The juxtaposition of the mundane and the exotic/erotic in these two paintings provide a striking contrast.

 

Lucas Cranach, The Judgement of Paris c. 1530-5

This wonderfully detailed, beautiful painting by Lucas Cranach, hangs together with two other paintings creating a set. As stunning as this painting is, when it comes to the detailing in the painting, it is that which showcases the immense talent of Cranach. Looking at the painting, the veil over the three goddess’s bodies, the skill of Cranach becomes visible. The veils are so thin it is almost as if nothing covers them, yet the presence of the veils creates an air of mystery and allure around the women.

 Another detail concerning the women which makes the painting extraordinary is that Cranach has added a small amount of pubic hair. A detail which is striking as other paintings of the same period, an example of another painting by Cranach hanging right beside this painting, would present the naked female body without any hint of bodily hair. No body hair was seen as a sign of purity and it begs the question why Cranach would add the hair here and not in the painting next to this one.

Although the addition of the pubic hair may hint at the naked women’s impurity, their bodies and faces are set to an ideal, there is neither sign of a blemish nor any disfigurement, and they are a sign of perfection. The women are carefree and there is no sign of worry on their faces. This perfection also gives the women a rather youthful, adolescent, angelic look to them. Naturally there is a lot more to say on this painting, however, I would urge you to go the exhibition and see this painting alongside the other objects on display.

 

Quentin Massys, Desiderius Erasmus, 1517

What impressed me the most during our visit to the Queen’s Gallery was the portrait of Erasmus, a gift from the Dutch humanist to his English friend, Thomas More. It is interesting to see how the intellectuals maintained contact in the pre-photographic period. This painting reveals more than most of the pictures we have today. The resemblance between Erasmus and St. Jerome implies his new translation of St. Jerome’s bible. Moreover, the friendship between Erasmus and More are symbolized in the books on the shelf, including their collaboration of translating Lucian’s Dialogues and Erasmus’ ‘Praise of Folly’, written during his stay in London. To a large extent, the portrait is almost a letter itself. It commemorates the time the two intellectuals spent together as well as the product of their scholarly efforts; meanwhile, it reports the recent project of Erasmus. Ironically, when we look back at the pictures on Facebook, most of the vivid images tell less about our lives and thoughts.

 

Note: They have a Tudor and Stuart fashion exhibition forthcoming over the summer.

1. (a)  “To what extent has historical fiction become an ambassador for academic history?”, Sarah Dunant and Professor Lisa Jardine, Thursday 18 April 2013, 6:00 pm, UCL, Foster Court 114.

    (b) UCL Centre for Early Modern Exchanges *Special Guest Lecture* Stephen Pender (University of Windsor, Ontario), Heat and Moisture, Rhetoric and Spiritus, 24th April, 4.30pm, Foster Court 132.

2. Conference: Emerging Empires: England and Muscovy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 14th & 15th June 2013, V&A.

3. Working it Out: A Day of Numbers in Early Modern Writing,Saturday 18^th May 2013, Birkbeck, University of London,Keynes Library, 43-46 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD. http://numbersday.blogspot.co.uk

4. Research Assistants – History (2 posts, casual, initially for one month, one fluent in French, the other fluent in German), The Translation, Distribution and Reception of English Republican Works in Europe, c. 1640-1871. Starting date: 3 June 2013

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1. (a) “To what extent has historical fiction become an ambassador for academic history?”, Sarah Dunant and Professor Lisa Jardine, Thursday 18 April 2013, 6:00 pm, UCL, Foster Court 114.

Sarah Dunant and Professor Lisa Jardine will be discussing the extent to which historical fiction has, over the last twenty years, become an ambassador for academic historical writing. This discussion will consider the imminent publication of Sarah Dunant’s new novel set in Renaissance Italy and centred on the Borgia, Blood and Beauty.

Sarah Dunant is the international bestselling author of the novels The Birth of Venus, In the Company of the Courtesan and Sacred Hearts, all set in Renaissance Italy. Sarah Dunant is also a broadcaster and critic. She was a founding vice patron of the Orange Prize for women’s fiction and sits on the editorial board of the Royal Academy magazine.

Lisa Jardine CBE is Professor of Renaissance Studies at University College London. Professor Jardine is Director of the Centre for Humanities Interdisciplinary Research Projects and Director of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters. She is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and an Honorary Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge and Jesus College, Cambridge. She has published extensively on the Renaissance including works on Bacon, Shakespeare and Erasmus.

ALL WELCOME

For further information, please contact timothy.demetris.10@ucl.ac.uk

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1. (b) UCL Centre for Early Modern Exchanges *Special Guest Lecture* Stephen Pender (University of Windsor, Ontario), Heat and Moisture, Rhetoric and Spiritus, 24th April, 4.30pm, Foster Court 132.

In 1575, the Spanish physician Juan Huarte records his encounter with a “rude countrie fellow” who made “very eloquent discourse” after becoming frantic. Other brief historiae follow: a sick man who spoke only in verse; a “mad” page who imagined himself sovereign, delivering such rare political “conceits” that all onlookers, including his physician, lamented his cure; illiterates who, while afflicted, spoke Latin; and a woman who was able to discern virtues and vices in all those she met. In these and other cases, Huarte sues for natural causes, drawing on Aristotle in order to dismiss his colleagues’ willingness to ascribe to the devil ‘miraculous’ alterations in physical and mental capacity. Asked how such “great eloquence and wisedome” might be present in “a man who in his health time could scantly speak,” how the unlearned might speak in couplets or in Latin, Huarte replies that the “art of Oratorie was a science, which springs from a certaine point or degree of heat,” that illness sometimes funds elocution. Huarte’s answer is consonant with ancient, medieval, and early modern thought concerning calor innatus, innate heat (sometimes termed radical, principal, natural, or vital heat). The notion appears in Aristotle’s brief treatise on longevity, in which he argues that the quality and quantity of both heat and moisture in human and animal bodies determine life span (466a18- 466b2; cf. 466a1ff., 736b35). Still authoritative in medieval and early modern Europe, Aristotle’s Problemata includes the claim that “the whole body functions under the control of heat” (954a14, 953b22). Galen agreed: “the body is bound to this innate heat, … and it is this heat which is responsible for the creation of everything in the body.” For Galen, the source of heat is the heart, and heat is the ‘cause’ of physiological activity; in turn, it must be moderated by respiration, the ‘ventilation’ of the body by external air. Heat is also nourished by humidum radicale, radical moisture, the exhaustion of which causes aging and death. As Avicenna suggests, using a metaphor that became an universal image of life: The innate heat is thus the accidental cause of its own extinction, since it causes its own matter to be consumed, just as is the flame of a lamp which is extinguished because it consumes its own material. The more its dryness increases, the more the innate heat diminishes, and this never ceases before the final point, at which the consumed moisture can no longer be restored to its place. From antiquity through the middle ages, the consumption (or corruption — from outside air or alimentary waste) of radical moisture was the distinguishing feature of the animal economy, an open economy that, in one sense, consumes itself: moisture dries up, heat dissipates, we breath and consume impurities, death ensues.

Huarte’s contemporary, Jean Fernel, calls calor innatus, innate heat, the vitae opifex, the ‘manufacturer of life.’ Along with moisture and spiritus, innate heat “shaped the animal from the start, made it grow, and nourished … all natural activities.” Early in the seventeenth century, recognising “great controversy between Physititians and Philosophers,” Daniel Sennert explains that heat, moisture, and spiritus “are linked together by the nearest conjunction in the world.” But heat is “the Governour and Ruler of our lives,” nourished by the “fat and oylie body,” the radical moisture, in the fibres of similar parts. The “inborn heat,” Sennert continues, “is the chiefest instrument of the soul, by which it perfects, undergoes all the actions of life and whatsoever healthy thing in us … .” André du Laurens agrees — “the soul can doe nothing without heate” — and in 1607 Henry Cuff asserts that “our naturall heate is the chiefe instrument of the soul to exercise all the vitall functions.” Radical moisture fuels innate heat, but this vitae opifex works via spiritus, an ‘immaterial substance,’ rarefied from blood. “Great is the variety of opinions concerning the spirits,” writes a mid-century physician in the anonymous Anthropologie Abstracted. One sect thinks them a “numberlesse unity,” another a “superfluous plurality,” and still another a trinity — natural, vital, and animal, progressively evanescent — corresponding to nutritive, sensitive, and intellectual faculties. Despite some rebarbative skepticism, most philosophers and physicians agreed that spirits are attenuated matter, “subtle, invisible, and … exalted,” produced by the thinning and aeration of blood, first in the heart, then in the rete mirabile (a network of small arteries at the base of the brain) and in the ventricles of the brain. As I shall argue in this paper, this enchevêtrement of heat, radical moisture, and spiritus was the distinguishing feature of the animal economy, an economy that, in one sense, consumes itself. But what interests me is Huarte’s seemingly innovative assertion — eloquence is a matter of heat rather than, say, cognition or memory. Diposition, diathesis, organises capacity; the proportion of heat and moisture at any given time, in any given body, actualises that capacity; and thus what seems odd about Huarte’s arguments in fact confirms an ensemble of neglected ideas in early modern medicine and rhetoric: moisture, heat, and especially spiritus subvent what he calls a “Perfect Oratour.” To offer just one example: in 1675, Bernard Lamy urges “that the motions of the mind, do follow the motions of the Animal Spirits,” for “as those Spirits are … calm or turbulent, [so] the mind is affected with different Passions.” Lamy recognises several factors that determine eloquence — including environment (“Every Clymat hath its style”) — but sharpens his attention on spirits and “disposition.” About the operations of “spirits upon bodies and vehicles, and much more upon one another, we are in the dark,” according to Robert Boyle; this paper will illuminate the relationships between heat and moisture, rhetoric and spirits, ‘bodies and vehicles,’ in the period 1550 to 1700.

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2. Emerging Empires: England and Muscovy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

14th & 15th June 2013
In Association with the Society for Court Studies

Friday 14th June 2013
Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre

8:30 – 9:45 Early Viewing of V&A exhibition ‘Treasures of the Royal Courts: Tudors,
Stuarts and the Russian Tsars’ with Natalia Abramova, Curator of Silver,
Moscow Kremlin Museums, Angus Patterson, Curator of Armour, V&A,
Richard Edgcumbe, Curator of Jewellery, V&A and Clare Browne, Curator
of Textiles, V&A

This conference is supported by The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
£25, £20 concessions, £10 students (per day)
Book online or call 0207 942 2211

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3. Research Assistant – History (2 posts, casual, initially for one month) 

 

The Translation, Distribution and Reception of English Republican Works in Europe, c. 1640-1871 

 

We are seeking to employ two Research Assistants in History (one fluent in French, the other fluent in German) to undertake some initial research on the translation, distribution and reception of English republican works in Europe, c1640-1871 to help us prepare a grant application to the AHRC.

The work is likely to involve: 

• searches in catalogues and online databases
• searching eighteenth- and nineteenth-century periodicals for relevant reviews
• the compilation of a sources database
• some translation work
• travel to libraries and archives in the UK and Europe
• other basic administrative duties

In addition to the linguistic abilities noted above the candidates should have at least a Master’s degree in History, French, German Studies or a related subject area and a background in early modern intellectual history/ political history/ history of the book. Knowledge of other languages, especially Dutch and/or Latin would be an added bonus. The position might suit a final-year or recently completed PhD student.

One candidate will be employed by Newcastle University and the other by Northumbria University. Both will work under the supervision of Dr Rachel Hammersley and Dr Gaby Mahlberg.

Starting date: 3 June 2013 

Expressions of interest including a covering letter and CV should be emailed to rachel.hammersley@newcastle.ac.uk or gaby.mahlberg@northumbria.ac.uk by 7 May 2013. Interviews will be held on the morning of Wednesday 29 May 2013, either in person or via Skype.

For further information see http://englishrepublicanismineurope.wordpress.com

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4. Working it Out: A Day of Numbers in Early Modern Writing

 Saturday 18^th May 2013
Birkbeck, University of London
Keynes Library, 43-46 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD

http://numbersday.blogspot.co.uk

Registration Open

Early modern books are full of numbers, representing both practicality and mystery. This multidisciplinary one-day conference explores numbers in British early modern literature and textual culture. How were numbers and numerical techniques used in drama, dance, and poetry? What were the practical issues arising from printing numerical texts? How were numbers represented on the page in mathematical and accounting texts – and elsewhere? How were the index and the cross-reference created and used? To what extent would an early modern audience recognize mathematical references in literary texts and performance? Who would buy an arithmetic book and how might they use it?

 The conference will bring together researchers from the fields of literature, history of mathematics and of accounting, economic and cultural history, performance studies, and more to think in new ways about early modern numbers.

 Speakers include:

 –     Stephen Clucas, Birkbeck.

 –     Natasha Glaisyer, York.

 –     Richard Macve and Basil Yamey, London School of Economics.

 –     Carla Mazzio, University at Buffalo, SUNY.

 –     Emma Smith, Hertford College, Oxford.

 –     Adam Smyth, Birkbeck.

 Conference fee £10, including lunch. Register at: https://www2.bbk.ac.uk/english/workingitout.

 Free for postgraduates, if registered in advance. Please contact us at numbersday@gmail.com if you are a postgraduate student and would like to attend.

General questions can be directed to the organisers, Rebecca Tomlin and Katherine Hunt, at numbersday@gmail.com; also check out the blog at http://numbersday.blogspot.co.uk.

The conference organisers are grateful for the generous support provided by the Society for Renaissance Studies, the Royal Historical Society, the London Renaissance Seminar, and ICAEW’s Charitable Trusts.

 PROGRAMME

9.00-9.15	Registration
9.15-9.30	Welcome
9.30-10.00	Keynote: Stephen Clucas (Birkbeck): ‘The number which is no number: unity and number in the Renaissance.’
10.00-11.15	Panel 1: Accounting for numbers.Carla Mazzio (SUNY Buffalo): ‘Amounting to something: humanism, mathematics, Hamlet.’Richard Macve and Basil Yamey (LSE/ICAEW): ‘Powerful myths about double-entry book-keeping.’Rebecca Tomlin (Birkbeck): ‘Accounting as art: Peele among the humanists.’
11.15-11.30	Coffee break
11.30-12.00	Keynote: Natasha Glaisyer (York): ‘Printing, reading, writing and speaking numbers: early modern numeration tables.’
12.00-1.15	Panel 2: Material numbers.Laura Wright (Cambridge): ‘On dice and card play in early modern England.’Adam Smyth (Birkbeck): ‘Errata: mistaking numbers in early modern books.’Katherine Hunt (Birkbeck): ‘Handsome fractions: numbers on the page.’
1.15-2.15	Lunch (provided)
2.15-3.05	Panel 3: Artful numbers.Anne Daye (TrinityLaban Conservatoire for Music and Dance): ‘The symbolism of number in the Jacobean masque.’Guillaume Fourcade (Université Pierre et Marie Curie): ‘“If love […] such additions take”: mathematical poetics and impossible reckonings in John Donne’s love poems.’
3.05-3.20	Tea
3.20-4.35	Panel 4: Working numbers.Benjamin Wardhaugh (Oxford): ‘Using mathematical textbooks in eighteenth-century Britain.’Lisa Wilde (Princeton): ‘“…whiche elles shuld farre excelle mens mynde”: numerical reason in early English arithmetics.’Jasmine Kilburn-Toppin (V&A/RCA): ‘Mastering crafts: the mathematical measuring text and artisanal epistemology in seventeenth-century England.’
4.35-5.05	Keynote: Emma Smith (Oxford): ‘Are we being mathematical yet? Numbers and the profession of early modern studies.’
5.05-5.15	Break
5.15-6.30	Round table and drinks

 

 

 

Welcome to the new Early Modern Exchanges blog. Our intention is to replace the weekly newsletter with posts on this blog. This should kick off the week beginning the 15th April.

There are a couple of our own events coming up. Firstly, it is a huge pleasure to welcome Professor Stephen Pender from the University of Windsor, Ontario, who will give a special guest lecture on April 24th at 4.30pm in Foster Court 132, on the subject of ‘Heat and Moisture, Rhetoric and Spiritus‘.

On 16th May at 6.30pm in the Roberts Lecture Theatre 106, Roberts Buidling, Professor Helen Hackett will be in conversation with one of the directors of the world premiere of Samuel Daniel’s Tragedie of Cleopatra, Yasmin Arshad, as well as two of the actors from the show. It will include live performance and extracts from the DVD made of the production. The event is free but ticketed, book at Eventbrite.

Then on 29th May at 4.30pm, Foster Court 233, we have a seminar session on ‘Gabriel Harvey’s Reading’ with Matthew Symons (UCL, Centre for Editing Lives and Letters) and Chris Stamatakis (UCL, English) giving papers and the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters’ director, Lisa Jardine responding.