'Katherine Philips 350: Writing, Reputation, Legacy'

Registration has now opened for the conference 'Katherine Philips 350: Writing, Reputation, Legacy', which will be held in Marsh's Library, Dublin, between 26 and 28 June 2014. This conference marks the 350th anniversary of the publication of Katherine Philips's Poems (1664) and of her death the same year. It will include plenary lectures by Professor Elizabeth Hageman (co-editor of the forthcoming OUP edition of Philips's poems, plays and letters), Professor Sarah Prescott (Aberystwyth University), and Linzi Simpson (principal archaeologist at Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin), as well as sessions on Philips's poems and translations, publishing history, archipelagic contexts, and the posthumous reception of her work. The programme also includes an optional visit to the site of Smock Alley Theatre, where Philips's play Pompey was staged in 1663.

Conference registration is available at http://www.conference.ie/Conferences/AddRegistration.asp?Conference=252. The conference is supported by the Society for Renaissance Studies, who have funded a small number of postgraduate bursaries (fee waivers). To express interest in applying for a bursary, please write to the co-organisers, Dr Marie-Louise Coolahan and Dr Gillian Wright, at katherinephilips350@gmail.com. Any other questions about the conference should also be directed to this address.
The closing date for registration is 1 May 2014. Places at the conference are limited, so early registration is strongly advised. 

Programme 26-28 June, 2014
Philips and Print Publication: The Stationer’s Perspective
Editing Katherine Philips for Women Poets of the English Civil War
11.30-1.00. Panel 2: Literary Contexts
‘All oppositions are contiguous’: Hermetic Metaphysics in the Poetry of Katherine Philips
Katherine Philips’s ‘great affection and respect’ for French Heroic Romance
Epithalamic Poetics in Katherine Philips and John Milton

Can a woman deserve the name of enemy? Gender, War, and Law in Katherine Philips’s Corneille Translations
Katherine Philips’s Translation of ‘La Solitude de St Amant’: Between Mediation and Appropriation
Translatio imperii, Translatio studii: Conquest and Collaboration in Katherine Philips’s Dramatic Translations
From 19th-century Church to 17th-century Theatre: The Archaeological Discovery of Smock Alley
‘And why this Vault and Tomb?’ Memorial Culture and Friendship in Katherine Philips’s Poetry
Religion in Our Love: Aemilia Lanyer, Katherine Philips, and the Politics and Poetics of Devotional Eroticism
Religious Allusions and the Royal Image in Katherine Philips’s Poems

The Couplet versus the Poem: Late Seventeenth-Century Women Reading Katherine Philips
‘I long to know your Opinion of it’: The Serendipity of a Norton Inquiry and a Malfunctioning Timing Belt
KP in Connecticut: The Surprising Afterlife of Pompey’s Ghost
2.00-3.30. Panel 3: Ireland
Katherine Philips’s Dublin Admirers: ‘Philo-Philippa’ Unmasked
Making the Case for Artaban: Examining New Play Development in Ormond’s Court through the work of Robert Leigh
‘Behold this Creature’s form and State’: Katherine Philips and the Early Ascendancy
Spes Alunt Exsules: Clandestine Communications in the Verse Letters of Katherine Philips
Mary Beale (1633-1699), Katherine Philips, and the Art of Friendship

Katherine Philips 350: Writing, Reputation, Legacy Marsh’s Library, Dublin
Day 1: Thursday, 26 June
9.30-10. Registration and Welcome. 10-11. Panel 1: Publishing and Editing
Ben Crabstick, Independent Scholar
Sarah Ross, Victoria University of Wellington
11.00-11.30: coffee break
Sajed Chowdhury, King’s College London
Alice Eardley, University of Southampton
Paula Loscocco, Lehman College/CUNY
1.00-2.00 lunch

2.00-3.30. Panel 3: Translation

Penelope Anderson, University of Indiana
Line Cottegnies, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle
Deborah Uman, St John Fisher College
3.30-4.00: coffee break 4.00-5.00. Plenary:
Linzi Simpson, Archaeological Director, Smock Alley Theatre excavations
6.00-7.00. Visit to Smock Alley Theatre (optional)
Day 2: Friday, 27 June
9.30-11.00. Panel 1: Religion and Memory
Katia Fowler, University of Chicago
Bronwyn Wallace, University of Pennsylvania
Hui-Chu Yu, National Pingtung University of Education
11.00-11.30: coffee break

11.30-1.00. Panel 2: Afterlives

Victoria Burke, University of Ottawa
Andrea Sununu, DePauw University
Nathan Tinker, Independent Scholar
1.00-2.00: lunch
Andrew Carpenter, University College Dublin
Patrick Tuite, Catholic University of America
Lee Morrissey, Clemson University
4.00-5.00. Plenary:
Professor Sarah Prescott, Aberystwyth University Katherine Philips and Wales
Conference Dinner (optional)
Day 3: Saturday, 28 June
9.30-11.00. Panel 1: Friendship
Sonya Cronin, Trinity College Dublin
Helen Draper, Courtauld Institute

Scott Howard, University of Denver

‘That Noble Flame’: Literary History and Regenerative Time in Katherine Philips’s Elegies and Society of Friendship
11.00-11.30: coffee break 11.30-1.00. Plenary:
Professor Elizabeth H. Hageman, University of New Hampshire ‘Katherine Philips, Her Bookes: 1664-2014’
1.00. End of conference 

Errors! - CFP deadline 14 April 2014

Error and Print Culture, 1500-1800:

A one-day conference at the Centre for the Study of the Book, Oxford University

Saturday 5 July 2014

Call for Papers

'Pag. 8. lin. 7. for laughing, reade, languishing.'

Richard Bellings, A Sixth Booke to the Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia (1624), ‘Errata’

Recent histories of the book have replaced earlier narratives of technological triumph and revolutionary change with a more tentative story of continuities with manuscript culture and the instability of print. An abstract sense of technological agency has given way to a messier world of collaboration, muddle, money, and imperfection. Less a confident stride towards modernity, the early modern book now looks stranger: not quite yet a thing of our world.

            What role might error have in these new histories of the hand-press book? What kinds of error are characteristic of print, and what can error tell us about print culture? Are particular forms of publication prone to particular mistakes? How effective were mechanisms of correction (cancel-slips; errata lists; over-printing; and so on), and what roles did the printing house corrector perform? Did readers care about mistakes? Did authors have a sense of print as an error-prone, fallen medium, and if so, how did this inform their writing? What links might we draw between representations of error in literary works (like Spenser's Faerie Queene), and the presence of error in print? How might we think about error and retouching or correcting rolling-press plates? What is the relationship between engraving historians' continuum of difference, and letter-press bibliographers' binary of variant/invariant? Was there a relationship between bibliographical error and sin, particularly in the context of the Reformation? How might modern editors of early modern texts respond to errors: are errors things to correct, or to dutifully transcribe? Is the history of the book a story of the gradual elimination of error, or might we propose a more productive role for slips and blunders?

            Proposals for 20-minute papers are welcome on any aspect of error and print, in Anglophone or non-Anglophone cultures. Please email a 300-word abstract and a short CV to Dr Adam Smyth (adam.smyth@balliol.ox.ac.uk) by 14 April 2014.

Rome and Home: The Cultural Uses of Rome in Early Modern English Literature

Ancient Rome had a pervasive hold over the early modern imagination and its influence can be discerned in a variety of sources, discourses, and practices during the period. Episodes from Roman history provided the inspiration for numerous plays and narrative poems, as well as offering an effective means of interrogating such political and philosophical positions as republicanism, absolutism and stoicism. Roman history also provided a host of good and bad exemplary figures, as well as highlighting the dangers of civil war and political factionalism. Roman authors like Seneca, Juvenal, Horace, and Terence also had a considerable influence on the development of various literary genres during the period and many historical and political works were influenced by both the style and content of such commentators as Cicero and Tacitus. The influence of ancient Rome also had a bearing upon English national identity. The myth of the translatio imperii, as promulgated in the histories of Geoffrey of Monmouth, was often appropriated in propaganda as a means of legitimising England’s imperial ambitions. James I also set out to refashion himself as an Augustan ruler whose iconography owed much to the resonance of imperial Rome.

This special issue will explore the influence of ancient Rome upon the literature and culture of early modern England and the related issues it provoked. We therefore welcome proposals for articles that consider any aspect of this subject; topics for discussion may include (but are not restricted to):

·      Roman history as a narrative source in early modern drama, satire, and narrative poetry.

·      Translation, rhetoric, and the influence of Latin.

·      The influence of republicanism and stoicism and the bearings of Roman political ideas upon debates relating to sovereignty, citizenship, and absolutism.

·      The relationship between ancient Rome and English (or British) national identity.

·      The use of imagery associated with the Roman Empire in royal propaganda and iconography.

·      The influence of Roman sources in debates relating to political factionalism and civil war.

·      The resonance of Roman culture compared with the influence of ancient Greece.

·      The links between Rome and Catholicism.

Please send abstracts (250-300 words) to Professor Lisa Hopkins (l.m.hopkins@shu.ac.uk), Dr Daniel Cadman (d.cadman@shu.ac.uk), or Dr Andrew Duxfield (a.duxfield@shu.ac.uk) by Friday 2 May 2014.