Writing the Renaissance North

Northern Renaissance Seminar

Saturday 22^nd June 2013, 10:00am-4:30pm

Sheffield Hallam University, Room 921, Owen Building, City Campus

(http://www.shu.ac.uk/university/visit/find-us/citycampus-map.pdf)

Please contact renaissancenorth@yahoo.co.uk to register.

Keynote Speaker: Professor James Loxley (University of Edinburgh)

This one-day symposium will focus on the ways in which the idea of the north was understood, imagined and represented in the writing of the early modern period. The papers will consider early modern literary and cultural engagements with the north, both as a geographical space and an intellectual concept. The topics explored in the papers will include: the political ideas associated with the north; the roles of Scotland and the north of England in shaping the political landscape of the British isles; the ambivalence of the cultural presence of the north in relation to English and British identity; the ways in which the north figured in debates about transgressive behaviour, such as political insurrection and witchcraft; and the effect of the north upon the afterlives of literary texts in biographical narratives and modern dramatic performances. Professor Loxley’s keynote paper will examine the recently discovered manuscript account of Ben Jonson’s walk to Edinburgh and consider the contrasting topographical constructions of north and south, and of England and Scotland.

There is no registration fee and refreshments will be provided, but we do require you to email us in advance to book a place: renaissancenorth@yahoo.co.uk.

10:00 Arrival and Coffee

10:15 Session One

Harriet Phillips (Cambridge University), ‘York, York, for my money: merry ballads and the Tudor North.’

Dr Chris Butler (Sheffield Hallam University), ‘“Lancastrian Spenser”? How Far North Did He Go?’

Sheilagh Ilona O’Brien (University of Queensland), ‘“Pull for the poultry, fowl, and fish, For empty shall not be a dish”: Descriptions of sabbats and witchcraft in The Late Lancashire Witches.’

11:45 Coffee

12:00 Session Two

Dr Sarah Dewar-Watson (University of Sheffield), ‘History, Tragedy and Mary Queen of Scots.’

James Mawdesley (University of Sheffield), ‘Royalism and the Northern clergy: Exploring clerical allegiances in the Diocese of Carlisle during the English civil wars and republic.’

1:00 Lunch

2:00 Keynote Paper 

Professor James Loxley (University of Edinburgh), ‘Ben Jonson’s Road North.’

3:00 Coffee

3:15 Session Three

Dr Alisa Manninen (University of Tampere), ‘Macbeth, King James and the Anglicization of Royal Power.’

Dr Kate Wilkinson (Sheffield Hallam University), ‘“Impossible for the Production of Shakespeare”: Speaking Shakespeare in Northern and Speaking Northern in Shakespeare.’

4:15 Closing Remarks: Professor Lisa Hopkins (Sheffield Hallam University).

4:30 End of symposium.