Week 3 - " 'Behindhand With Their Countrymen': The Literary Culture of Eighteenth-Century Exeter"

Dr Joseph Crawford (University of Exeter)

Exeter - as described by Daniel Defoe in the early eighteenth-century: "large, rich, beautiful, populous and...once very strong".

Joseph Coles, "A true plan of the city of Excester Anno Domini MDCCIX" (1709)

This week, we'd like to welcome Dr Joseph Crawford from the University of Exeter, here to speak to us about his current research on the city's eighteenth-century literary culture:

Abstract

In the early eighteenth century, the south-west of England was still a remote and little-visited area. Exeter, which in 1700 was still one of the largest and richest cities in England, served as the regional capital, separated from London by a hundred and fifty miles of famously terrible West Country roads which took four days to traverse by coach. Throughout the century, the most gifted writers born in the region - John Gay, Hannah Cowley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge - headed to London to seek their fortunes; but the printing and book-selling trades flourished in Exeter, and by the 1780s the city could boast a well-established local literary culture, with Devonshire doctors, clergymen, officers, Dissenters, and in one case even an Exmoor wool-comber coming to Exeter to have their writings printed and sold. In this seminar, I shall map out the development of this local literary culture, and discuss some of the ways in which it both conformed with and deviated from the more familiar national narratives regarding the development of English literature during the eighteenth century.

As ever, all are welcome to attend both the seminar and the wine reception afterwards; we hope to see many of you on Thursday!

*Week 2 - Additional Romantic Realignments Seminar*

Professor David Bromwich (Yale University) - 'Romanticism, Justice, and the Idea of the Nation'

Wednesday 23 October, 5:15pm, Seminar Room A, St Cross Building

We're delighted to welcome Professor David Bromwich from Yale University this week, who has very kindly agreed to speak at Romantic Realignments while he is here in Oxford giving the Clarendon Lectures.

Ahead of Wednesday's seminar, David has provided a short list of readings for those who would like to consider some - or all - of the main texts we'll be focusing on during the session:

- Richard Price, Discourse on the Love of our Country

- William Hazlitt, On Patriotism

- William Wordsworth, 'I grieved for Buonaparte'; 'To Toussaint L'Ouverture'; 'When I have borne in memory'; 'To Thomas Clarkson'

- Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address

This promises to be a great opportunity for informal discussion, questions and thoughts to thrive; all are warmly encouraged to attend.  Hope to see lots of you then! 

Michaelmas 2013 Termcard

Romantic Realignments

Every Thursday at 5.15, English Faculty Building, 
Seminar Room A.

*Extra seminar on Wednesday of Week 2.*

Week 1, 17 October: 

Daniel Cook, University of Dundee. 

Wordsworth's Chatterton.

*Week 2, 23 October:

David Bromwich, Yale University. 

Romanticism, Justice, and the Idea of the Nation.

                                    

Week 2, 24 October:

Octavia Cox, University of Oxford.

Pope, Cowper, and the Epic.

Week 3, 31 October:

Joseph Crawford, University of Exeter.

'Behindhand With Their Countrymen': The Literary Culture of 18th Century Exeter.

Week 4, 7 November: 

Alexander Freer, University of Cambridge.

Wordsworth, Coleridge and the Untranslatable.

Week 5, 14 November:

Céline Sabiron, University of Oxford.

Writing the Border: Walter Scott and the Travel Narrative.

Week 6, 21 November:

Paul Whickman, University of Nottingham.

The Promethean Conqueror, the Galilean Serpent and the Jacobin Jesus: Shelley's Interpretation(s) of Jesus Christ.

Week 7, 28 November:

Murdo Macdonald, University of Dundee.

The Significance of James Macpherson's Ossian for the Art of J. M. W. Turner.

Week 8, 5 December:

Rebecca Shuttleworth, University of Leicester.

Rationality, Religion, and Female Dissent: Elizabeth Heyrick (1769–1831).

Eighteenth Century Evening at Oxford Brookes University

‘The Cheerful Companion’: Poetry, Music

& Performance in Eighteenth-Century

Poetic Miscellanies

Oxford Brookes University Headington Hill Hall, May 21, 2013, 19.00 h

If we were able to step inside the parlours and drawing rooms of the eighteenth century, we’d find homes busy with home-made culture – book groups and tea table parties; amateur dramatics; groups of women reading and weeping their way through popular sentimental fiction, and men at punch parties singing songs about dogs.

This interactive event (1,5 hours) will explore the varied world of eighteenth-century poetic miscellanies, popular collections of verse, prose and music that were the main way in which many ordinary people consumed literature in contemporary parlours and drawing rooms. 

The evening will consists of a series of short talks, readings and music, followed by an interactive session, in which participants will be able to experience an authentic sewing session of a ‘huswif’ hosted by Nicole Pohl (Oxford Brookes) – no previous experience needed!

The evening will be a unique collaboration between the Brookes Poetry Centre, and the Digital Miscellanies Index Project at the University of Oxford, supported by the the folk & roots influenced duo Alva with multi-instrumentalist Giles Lewin and the acclaimed singer of medieval, renaissance, folk & contemporary music Vivien Ellis. Wine and refreshments will be served.

If you want to book a place, free of charge, please contact: Nicole Pohl, npohl@brookes.ac.uk.

Trinity Termcard

Dear All, 
Please find the Trinity Termcard attached

Barry Hough, Bournemouth University 
(Week 1) 25 April: ‘Coleridge’s Government Communications: Ethics or Calculation?’ 

Tom Clucas, Christ Church, Oxford
(Week 2) 2 May: ‘“Thou only bliss / Of Paradise that has survived the fall”: Domesticity from Cowper to Wordsworth’ 

Prof. Heather Glen, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge
(Week 3) 9 May: 'Imagining Place: Wordsworth’s Poetry and James Clarke’s A Survey of the Lakes' 

Ann-Clair Michoux, Lincoln College, Oxford 
(Week 4) 16 May: ‘"Wild to buy all": Jane Austen's Wild English Girls and Regency Society’ 

Dino Felluga, Purdue University 
(Week 5) 23 May: ‘Byron’s Don Juan and the Novel’ 

All Welcome to join us for drinks & dinner after the seminar!

Oxford Romanticism Conference, Somerville College
(Week 6) 30 May: registration to open soon!

Convenors: Judyta Frodyma (judyta.frodyma[at]ell.ox.ac.uk) and Olivia Reilly 
(olivia.reilly[at]ell.ox.ac.uk)

Andrew Warren: Romantic Entanglements

**Change in Termcard**

For our final seminar this term, Thursday, March 7th, we would like to welcome Dr. Andrew Warren, Assistant Professor of English at Harvard University.

He will be speaking on 'Romantic Entanglements'

Abstract:

The term “entanglement” comes from the Old Norse (tang) for a kind of seaweed. In

Middle English (tangil, tangyl) it became primarily a social or legal term; someone

“entangled” someone else by encumbering, hampering or embarrassing them in human

affairs—legal, financial, social. Entanglement thereby implies a connection both material

and immaterial, and that also does not form a unity. It is more often a kind of burden, a

half-unwanted but seemingly necessary connection; it therefore registers an anxiety or

unease largely absent from a more settled or conventional notion such as “Wholeness” or

“Organic Unity.”

In this talk I will trace a history of this trope which, I argue, becomes particularly amplified

in Romantic and proto-Romantic texts. If in Enlightenment discourses—from empiricist

philosophies of mind, to political theory, to medicine—entanglement is most often used

as a metaphor to describe confusion or metaphysical extravagance, in the Romantic era

entanglement becomes a self-consciously employed concept used to explore a range of

issues. I will focus, in particular, on work by Sterne, Rousseau, Shelley and Wordsworth.

Hilary 2013 Termcard

Dear All,

Here is the termcard for Hilary 2013. I would like to highlight, among many others, talks by Mary-Ann Constantine and James Vigus this term! Looking forward to seeing many of you there!

Romantic Realignments

Every Thursday at 5:15pm

Magdalen College, Lecture Room A

Week 1: 17th January
David Higgins (Leeds) Local and Global Geographies in Coleridge’s Poetry of the 1790s

Week 2: 24th January

Jo Taylor (Keele) Hartley Coleridge's sublime spaces

Week 3: 31st January

John Goodridge (Nottingham) Bloomfield, Clare and labouring-class poetry

Week 4: 7th February

Catherine Redford (Bristol) 'What was, what is, and shall be': Empire and the Romantic Last Man* please note the change in title 

Week 5: 14th February

Mary-Ann Constantine (Wales) Here be dragons: the politics of literature in 1790s Wales

Week 6: 21st February

Pedro Carol (Fribourg) “Strike at the root”: Shelley’s Revision of the Creation Myth in "Queen Mab" and "The Revolt of Islam"

Week 7: 28th February

James Vigus (Queen Mary) Wordsworth's 'Poetic Quakerism'

Week 8: 7th March*note the change in speaker

Andrew Warren (Harbard) Romantic Entanglements