Week 8: A.C. Grayling on Hazlitt

Week 8, Thursday 6th March

Hazlitt and 'disinterestedness'
Professor A.C. Grayling, Birkbeck College

Meetings will be held from 5.15-6.45 p.m. in the Ferrar room, Hertford college, Oxford. All are welcome to join us for discussion and refreshments.

Week 7:How to be Irish in the 1790s

Week Seven -Thursday 28th February

How to be Irish in the 1790s: Rewriting Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Reading The History of Ned Evans
Helena Kelly, University of Oxford

Week Six -Thursday 21st February

Coleridge and the 'sentient brain'
Dr Huw Price

Dr Price began his academic studies in the sciences, studying Human Sciences at UCL and then gaining an MSc in Neuroscience at Oxford. His work then shifted to history, in which he gained his doctorate entitled "The Emergence of the Doctrine of the "Sentient Brain" in Britain, 1650-1850". At this week’s seminar Dr Price will be focusing on Coleridge’s concept of the “Sentient Brain”, a phrase which appeared in his 1794 poem ‘Religious Musings’. He has published both scientific and historical articles and a chapter on "Priestley and Theories of the Brain" in J. S. Birch and J.Lee (eds). Joseph Priestley: A Celebration of His Life and Legacy (2007), pp. 206-213.

5.15, Ferrar room, Hertford College, Oxford.
All welcome.

week 5: Identifying Coleridge: The Detection of Authorial Style

Week 5: Thursday 14th February. Ferrar room, Hertford college, 5.15.

Identifying Coleridge: The Detection of Authorial Style

Dr Peter Millican, Hertford College

Last term OUP published a new edition of Goethe's Faustus, in an impressive but anonymous 1821 translation that had previously been attributed to George Soane. The editors, Fred Burwick of UCLA and Jim McKusick of Montana, had long suspected that the real author might be Coleridge, based on the translation's magnificent style and some circumstantial evidence. Objective proof, however, eluded them until McKusick hit upon the idea of using computer-aided "stylometry" in the form of Signature, a software package published in 2003 by Peter Millican (Director of the Electronic Text Centre at Leeds, now Philosophy Fellow at Hertford, and an eighteenth-century scholar). McKusick's subsequent analysis provided solid statistical support for what has been described as " the biggest breakthrough in Coleridge scholarship in a hundred years".

In this talk, Peter Millican will be explaining McKusick's methods, whilst unveiling the new version of the Signature system and illustrating its potential for illuminating literary mysteries, from Aristotle and the Bible to Shakespeare and the eighteenth-century novel. Version 2.0 has been greatly enhanced, with a range of new user-friendly tools for exploring both authorship and the development of literary style. The main aim is to persuade scholars that stylometry is a worthy and fascinating addition to their repertoire of research methods, but also to offer assistance in future projects.

Publicity on Burwick and McKusick's work can be found at: http://www.umt.edu/urelations/rview/spring07/literature.htm

Article in The Independent about McKusick's edition: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/sex-and-drugs-and-english-literature-coleridge-and-a-faustian-pact-432577.html

Week 4: Caricatures of Sheridan

Week Four -Thursday 7th February

The Theatricality of Politics: Caricaturing Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 1783-1816
David Francis Taylor, University of Cambridge

Seminars start at 5.15 in the Ferrar room, Hertford college.
All welcome