Call For Papers: Maternity and Romance Narratives in the Renaissance

[this via the LRS list]

Helen Hackett notes the "profoundly ambivalent attitude to the maternal"
in Shakespeare's last plays (_Women and Romance Fiction in the English
Renaissance_, 155). In spite of the associations of romance as a genre
with a female readership, such ambivalence to the maternal may
characterize the romance tradition more broadly. This panel will
consider aspects of the maternal in the romance narratives that
circulated in England and continental Europe in the Renaissance. Papers
may explore romance in any genre or guise.

Proposals are invited from graduate students as well as more senior
scholars of literature for papers at the Renaissance Society of America
Annual Conference, to be held in Venice on 8-10 April 2010.

Please send a brief abstract, as well as a short CV, to kbamford@mta.ca,
by Friday, April 18th. Accepted proposals will be announced by May 2nd.

Karen Bamford
Associate Professor and Head
Department of English
Mount Allison University
Sackville, NB, CANADA E4L 4N4