Romance and its Transformations, 1550-1750

Call for Papers
June 30^th and July 1^st, 2014, Chawton House Library, UK



Keynote Speakers
Professor Ros Ballaster, Oxford University
Professor Emerita Mary Ellen Lamb, Southern Illinois University


With a public keynote by Professor Nandini Das, Liverpool University

As a genre, romance is defined by transformation: it is both a recurrent motif within romance and a characteristic of a form that has itself been transformed over the centuries and in different locations. But romance maintains a degree of formal and thematic integrity, as well as its appeal with different generations of readers and across social and cultural boundaries. This conference will explore the appropriation and transformation of romance in Britain and beyond between 1550 and 1750, as writers adopted and rewrote the motifs, storylines, characters, and formal elements of the genre. In doing so, it will bring into dialogue the different ideas about and critical approaches to the genre that are developing our understanding of the significance of romance within historical periods traditionally considered in isolation from one another, including the Renaissance, the early modern period and the eighteenth century.

We welcome proposals for papers on any aspect of the way romance has been adopted and transformed between 1550 and 1750. Potential areas of investigation include but are not limited to:

Romance and…

commonplace books, conduct books, drama, poetry (including epic), letters, life writing, novels and other forms of prose fiction, political activism, political writing, print and, manuscript culture, scientific writing, social interactions, translation.

The deadline for 500 word abstracts is December 31^st, 2013

Please send abstracts to Alice Eardley: a.eardley@soton.ac.uk or Julie Eckerle: ecker014@morris.umn.edu