Maritime Britain

The University of Warwick are pleased to host a one-day interdisciplinary workshop entitled 'Maritime Britain: Histories and Fictions, 1550-1800', organized in cooperation with the Institute of Advanced Study and the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance.

From Hakluyt to Cook and Scott, from Conrad to Forester and O'Brian, the maritime life of Britain has engaged national and international audiences for the past five centuries. This workshop will examine the beginnings of this myth-making process; for it was between 1550 and 1800 that the increasingly imperial self-consciousness of Britain began systematically to produce historical and fictional documentation – accounts of voyages real or invented, stories based on history, and history based on stories. Their national and nationalistic power helped to shape people’s perception of Britain’s maritime past, present and future. This mythologization of Britain’s maritime strength was part of a historical process which turned the kingdom into one of the most important and influential cultural and economic centres worldwide. It also often presented the less poetic reasons behind long-range enterprises – trade, exploitation, colonization, war – as heroic deeds in the history of the nation, carried out by men and women whose bravery in the most extreme situations inspired the British people at home.

This blending of history and fiction, of actuality and legend, is a challenging issue with which both historians and literary scholars have long had to contend. The Maritime Britain workshop will host a discussion of such histories and fictions, and present an analysis of past and contemporary perceptions of Britain’s maritime experience.

Programme

9.30-10.15: Registration and Introduction
10.15-11.00: Sir Francis Drake and the Argonauts: Maritime rhetoric
in London city festivals, 1603-1640
(Sara Trevisan, Warwick)
11.00-11.30: Coffee Break
11.30-12.15: Pirates and Family Life, 1680-1730
(Margarette Lincoln, National Maritime Museum)
12.15-13.00: Space, Place and the Early Modern Sea
(Bernhard Klein, Kent)
13.00-14.00: Lunch Break
14.00-14.45: Sailors on Horseback: The representation of seamen
and social space in eighteenth-century British visual culture
(Geoffrey Quilley, Sussex)
14.45-15.30: Singing for the Nation: Balladry, naval recruitment
and the language of patriotism in eighteenth-century Britain
(James Davey, National Maritime Museum)
15.30-16.00: Tea Break
16.00-16.45: Final discussion


The workshop aims to bring together postgraduate students and academics interested in the literary, theatrical, historical and artistic dimensions of Britain's maritime culture. The flyer can be found at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/ias/prf/2011/trevisan/flyer-maritimebritain.pdf

The workshop will be held on Friday, May 11, 2012, at the Wolfson Research Exchange (seminar room 1), University of Warwick. It is free of charge, and lunch and refreshments will be provided. Please register by emailing Sara Trevisan at s.trevisan@warwick.ac.uk, by May 5, 2012.