Handle with Care: Authority and Diplomacy from Dante to Spenser

Liverpool Hope University, 4-5 July 2009

Keynote Speaker: Professor John Watkins (University of Minnesota)

Proposals are invited for a conference which will examine the interrelated roles
of the author and the diplomat in the late medieval, early modern and
Renaissance periods. Many of the key figures in European literature – Dante,
Petrarch, Chaucer, Wyatt, Sidney, Machaut and Froissart, to name but a few –
were also highly-skilled ambassadors and diplomats. This conference will
investigate the perceived interrelationship between the roles of author and
ambassador, the extent to which the literary permeated the political, and vice
versa. Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

• The changing role of the poet-diplomat
• Poetry as propaganda
• Translation and intercultural studies
• The development of the nation state
• The textuality of the political / the politics of the text
• Laureateship and poetic fame
• Humanism
• Latin as lingua franca
• Clerk / notary culture
• Cross-fertilization of discourses

Proposals of no more than 300 words should be emailed to Dr Will Rossiter (rossitw@hope.ac.uk) by 1 May 2009.