Tous les articles par Aurélie Griffin

CFP JE PEMS/LRS, 21 Novembre 2025, Université Paris-Cité : “Informal Forms”

David Roelands’s elephant, included in Magazin oft’ Pac-huys der loffelycker penn-const, 1617. https://manchesterarthistory.wordpress.com/2022/07/04/fieldnotes-from-the-museum-early-modern-netherlandish-calligraphy-by-niels-weijenberg/

PEMS/ LRS One-Day Joint Conference

21 November 2025

 Université Paris-Cité

Olympes de Gouges building, room 830

 “Informal Forms”

The Paris Early Modern Seminar and the London Renaissance Seminar invite contributions for their next joint conference, to be held at Université Paris-Cité on 21 November 2025.

How are we to understand the relationships between formal and informal forms? In sixteenth and seventeenth-century Anglophone and European writing and, indeed, in visual and material culture, the emphasis on highly wrought and final form coexists with forms, modes and genres that are subject to mission creep, rewriting, reordering, re-use and other forms of movement into informality. Indeed, often it is only possible to contextualise or understand wrought forms by using the more informal, intertextual or associated forms that such complete forms seem to disavow.

Relationships between formal and informal forms are everywhere. Thus, if a portrait is (often) a finished object, it can nevertheless be much more deeply intelligible if set alongside account books, notebooks, poems letters or even – in the case of Artemisia Gentileschi – a court case. If a sonnet or love lyric is a final product, then it might be copied, rewritten, extracted by Tottell or otherwise repurposed. If a Midsummer Night’s Dream is an intricate comedy, it is intertextual with materials from far across culture, remade from other forms. Moreover, many forms – journal, diary, meditation, parish record – have ab initio highly flexible horizons of expectation and understanding and might be written, rewritten and re-ordered as priorities change. Moreover, as time passes the material form of texts is changed – they are rebound, re-shaped, menaced by damage, iconoclasm, decay.

This symposium invites you to take your own research area and consider the relationships that might be covered by the term “informal forms” in early modern culture – the connection of drafting to completion; the removal or return of details, copying, redaction and missing pages. We would like you to speak on any aspect of these relationships that work for you from a beautiful gold cup delivered with an annotated or scrappy letter, a diary, commentary a painting’s owners’ documents versus the image. Any or all of these can fit the brief.

Papers will be between 15 and 20 minutes (length tbc) and we welcome proposals from scholars at all career stages. We are keen to have abstracts from historians, art historians and literary scholars. Please send an abstract of 150-200 wordsto s.wiseman@bbk.ac.uk, aurelie.griffin@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr and emma.bartel@u-paris.fr by July 15, 2025. Topics we are interested in might include, but are not limited to:

  • ‘Sets’ of texts both formal and informal
  • Texts that have been deformed, wrecked and reformed
  • Texts that ‘explain’ more final and formal forms.
  • Informal forms and intertextuality or circulation
  • Informal forms and authorship
  • Informal forms and gender
  • Literary forms.

SEM 4/04/25, PEMS/ ICCEMS, Armel Dubois-Nayt (UVSQ), “Mary, Queen of Scots in the Querelle about Women’s Education”, online, 10-11.30 am

Illustration.

Mary Stuart, portrait by François Clouet (1558-1560), Royal Collection (public domain).

“Mary, Queen of Scots in the Querelle about women’s education”

Mary Stuart has been the subject of much controversy among historians since the sixteenthcentury. These debates can be explained in part by the religious or national standpoints of the authors involved, which have been discussed at length. This has not necessarily been the case of their gender biases, i.e. the way in which they consider the difference between the sexes. And yet those prejudices play a decisive role in the reconstruction of the character of the Queen of Scots and her history. The aim of this talk will be to show how discourses on the difference/inequality of the sexes, which form the querelle des femmes, can enrich our understanding, if not of this queen and her actions, then at least of how they are narrated. To do so, it will focus on one specific topic of discussion: women’s access to education. It will clarify the terms of the debate on women’s education as they were formulated in early Renaissance before turning to Mary Stuart’s contribution to the debate in her exercise book and her self-fashioning as a learned lady. Finally, it will recreate the debate on Mary’s scholarly achievements between the philogynist Brantôme and the misogynist John Knox.

Biography: Armel Dubois-Nayt is an associate professor of English at the University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin/Paris-Saclay. She specializes in cultural history in early modern Scotland, England and France with special emphasis on the gender controversy. She has just finished a monograph on “Mary Queen of Scots in the querelle des femmes” after co-editing several volumes on this gargantuan controversy in Europe. 

Since 2020, she has been running the AVISA project which aims at writing the history of sexual harassment before #metoo with Pr. Réjane Hamus-Vallée (UEVE). Together, they have just published Écrire l’histoire du harcèlement sexuel sur la longue durée – Nommer, dénoncer, représenter, mettre en image ou en musique, Paris, L’harmattan, (in the “des idées et des femmes” series edited by Guyonne Leduc), 2025.

This conference will take place over Zoom. The link can be obtained by sending an email to parisearlymodernseminar2023@gmail.com

SEM 16/01/2025, Theo van Heijnsbergen (Glasgow), “When ‘the centre cannot hold’: Scottish literary parody from the late medieval into the early modern in a European context”, MDR Sorbonne Nouvelle, 17h30-19h 

Joan Blaeu, Scotia Regnum cum insulis adjacentibus, Atlas van der Hagen, Amsterdam, 1654 SCOTIA REGNUM cum insulis adjacentibus

Source: Joan Blaeu, Scotia Regnum cum insulis adjacentibus, Atlas van der Hagen , 1654 (National Library of the Netherlands)

Le Paris Early Modern Seminar a le plaisir de vous convier à sa première séance de l’année 2025, qui aura lieu le 16 janvier de 17h30 à 19h à la Maison de la Recherche de La Sorbonne Nouvelle, 4 rue des Irlandais, 75005, en salle du Conseil.

Nous aurons le plaisir d’entendre Theo van Heijnsbergen (University of Glasgow) sur le sujet suivant: 

When ‘the centre cannot hold’: Scottish literary parody from the late medieval into the early modern in a European context 
 
The Paris Early Modern Seminar paper on 16 January will focus on one of the continuities between medieval into early modern Scottish literature, namely on the fact that, because of its cultural-historical and geo-political condition, Scots writing tends to provide an incalcitrant gloss on the national literary traditions that it interacts with (English, French, Gaelic, Latin, Norse), calqued on these literatures in an often parodic manner. Parody becomes more than a literary figure, it articulates a perspective on life and on its cultural expression that includes sensibilities well beyond the humorous. In doing so, Scottish writers sought a dialogue with especially English and French texts and culture.
      The paper will illustrate all this with many textual examples, particularly from the later fifteenth to the mid-seventeenth century. Where relevant, these will especially involve texts that have French sources or parallels, in order to set up a discussion on the day that invites comments from specialists in the relevant areas. This dialogue should make this an entertaining and informative session that will enrich the cultural and literary horizons of both speaker and audience. 
 
Dr Theo van Heijnsbergen is a lecturer in the Department of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow, teaching and researching mainly in the late medieval and 16th/17th-century period. His department is the only department of Scottish Literature in the world, i.e., of Anglophone literature written in or by people from Scotland. Being the only pre-1700 specialist in that department has made it necessary for him to teach across the usual period boundaries of medieval and early modern. This, crucially, allowed him to focus on literary and cultural-historical continuities across these two periods, as witnessed in his recent surveys in Oxford and Cambridge Companions and Handbooks for the period and in Literature, Letters and the Canonical (ed. van Heijnsbergen and Royan). 

 

Séance organisée par l’UVSQ

Modératrice: Armel Dubois-Nayt

SEM, 15/11/2024, 17h30-19h, MDR USN : Clotilde Thouret (Paris Nanterre), « Théâtre, prostitution, représentation(s) : quelle économie du spectacle ? » 

Le séminaire aura lieu le vendredi 15 novembre de 17h30 à 19h à la Maison de la Recherche de La Sorbonne Nouvelle, 4 rue des Irlandais, 75005. La séance est organisée par l’Université Paris Nanterre.

 Présentation:

Les controverses sur le théâtre, en Europe et plus encore en Angleterre, entretiennent et relancent une association topique, voire une assimilation, entre théâtre et prostitution. L’usage de la métaphore et de la figure est tel que l’on peut parler d’une « tropologie ». Cette association a souvent été relevée mais sans toujours en creuser la signification ni tenter d’en circonscrire la réalité. En reprenant textes polémiques et dramatiques, on se demandera ce qu’il en est du pouvoir révélateur du trope et de sa faculté occultante : la prostitution dit-elle quelque chose de l’expérience théâtrale ? le théâtre dit-il quelque chose de la prostitution ?

Clotilde Thouret est professeure de littérature générale et comparée à l’Université Paris Nanterre. Ses recherches portent sur le théâtre, en particulier sur le théâtre européen de la première modernité, à travers les rapports entre poétique et politique, les polémiques, les émotions esthétiques, les publics et les modes d’existence des œuvres.

Publications : Théâtre réinventé. Défenses de la scène dans l’Europe de la première modernité (Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2019) ; Théâtre et scandale (Fabula, Les colloques en ligne, 2019). De 2013 à 2018, co-direction, avec François Lecercle, du projet « la Haine du théâtre » (Labex Obvil, Univ. Paris-Sorbonne), sur les controverses sur le théâtre en Europe ; Littérature et polémiques, coll. « Poétiques comparatistes », Lucie éditions, 2022.

Discutant.e.s: Yan Brailowsky et Laïla Ghermani

La séance sera disponible en hybride. Le lien peut être obtenu sur demande auprès de Louise Roszak: parisearlymodernseminar2023@gmail.com

Doctoriales de PEMS, 15/11/2024, Maison de la Recherche de La Sorbonne Nouvelle

Les doctoriales du Paris Early Modern Seminar auront lieu le 15/11 à la Maison de la Recherche de La Sorbonne Nouvelle, 4 rue des Irlandais. 

PROGRAMME 

Organisation: Louise Roszak, Louise MccCarthy, Johann Paccou, Alice de Nanteuil.

10h00-10h15: Accueil participants + présentations informelles

10h15-11h00: Table Ronde, présentée par Johann Paccou: Participer à une communication scientifique 

11h00-12h00: Retour expérience docteur.e.s (Emma Bartel et Mathilde Alazraki)

12h00-14h00: Déjeuner

14h00-16h00: Ateliers

  • Guillaume Coatalen: Atelier Paléographie (14H00-14h50)

  • Pause (14h50-15H00)

  • Béatrice Rouchon: Atelier Pagination des Livres Anciens: Comment s’y Retrouver?  (15h00-15h50)

  • Pause (15h50-16h00)

16h00-17h00: Présentation des nouveaux doctorants (ouvert aux EC)

Les doctoriales seront suivies d’une conférence par Clothilde Thouret (voir article supra).

JE PEMS/ LRS “London Locations”, 14 juin 2024, Birkbeck: programme

LONDON LOCATIONS:

URBAN GEOGRAPHY, CREATIVE OPPORTUNITIES AND LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS

Paris Early Modern Seminar and London Renaissance Seminar Joint Conference

Organised by Sue Wiseman, Aurélie Griffin and Eva Lauenstein

June 14, 2024

9.00am-6.00pm

 

Keynes Library, also known as Room 114

Birkbeck

43 Gordon Square,

London WC1

Hand-coloured map of London cut from 1635 edition of Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg, Civitatis Orbis Terrarum.  MAP L85c no.27 (Digital Image File 3371). Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license. For better image resolution, view the image in LUNA.

Source: Civitates orbis terrarum. Public Domain Mark 1.0 https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/view-of-london-in-civitates-orbis-terrarum

What happened where in seventeenth century London – and why is that important? Panellists explore the many dimensions of place, space and person and analyse many kinds of texts from plays and letters to songs and parish records. These raise issues about the relationships between art and commerce, crime and justice, memory and reputation. Please do join us and share your thoughts.

9.00 Coffee

9.30-10.10 At a distance: London from Abroad

‘Home away from home: Memories of London locations in some early modern English accounts of distant travels’

Ladan Niayesh

10.10-10.55 Zooming in: Mapping people and place

Strange Inventions, Strange Changes and a Strange Order: Donald Lupton’s Subtly Subversive Gazeteer of Early Modern London
Claire Labarbe

‘Park Life: Hyde Park (1637); St. James Park (1671)’
Mark Houlahan


10.55-11.30 Coffee

11.30-12.10 Excavating: times and memories
‘Contact zones: Clerkenwell and the 1594/5 Gray’s Inn Revels’
Michelle O’Callaghan

12.10-1.30pm lunch

1.30-pm-2.30pm Living: the City
John Heminges (1566 – 1630): editor of the First Folio, ‘Citizen and Grocer’, and parish constable.
Meryl Faiers

‘ “A Mint in the Temple”: Coining in seventeenth century London’
 Judith Hudson 

2.30-3.00 Break


3pm-3.55 Commerce / theatre

‘ “Playing the Whore”: Early Modern Bawdy Houses as Theatrical Spaces’
Kameron R.L. Johnson


‘The Golden Pen: Peter Bales and the Blackfriars Writing Challenge of 1595’
Grace Murray

4.00-4.55 Beyond the Borders: East, South, West
‘Experiencing the Everyday in the East India Company’s Yard at Blackwall’

Michael Powell-Davis

‘Plague, Sewers, and Sunday Drinking: Locating the Globe Stairs and the Globe Tavern’
Héloïse M. Sénéchal

‘Consumption, Purging and Beyond the Borders’

Amelia Ormondroyd-Williams

4.55-5.15 break

5.15-6.00  Heterotopia? Mixing it
‘Where Actors and Musicians Meet: Creative Communities at the Early Modern Inns of Court’
Simon Smith


6.00 Drinks

ICCEMS/PEMS Seminar, 16/05/24, Ladan Niayesh (Paris-Cité), Laetitia Sansonetti (Paris-Nanterre) & guest editors, “Introducing the Polyglot Encounters in Early Modern Britain Series”

 

The Paris Early Modern Seminar is delighted to host the first online seminar of the International Consortium for Early Modern Studies.

The event will be held over Zoom. The link will be shared with PEMS members the week before.

More information about the Polyglot Encounters Brepols series: https://www.brepols.net/series/PEEMB

Abstract

In this presentation, we would like to introduce the series we co-edit with Brepols publishers, “Polyglot Encounters in Early Modern Britain” (https://www.brepols.net/series/PEEMB). The aim of this series is to investigate polyglot practices in early modern English literary texts by crossing perspectives in a transdisciplinary approach. Volumes in the series analyse how an English linguistic, but also social and political, and more generally cultural, identity is built by means of contact and interaction with other languages, through borrowings and translations.

We will present briefly volume 1, which was published in 2022, volume 2, which will come out later this year, and volume 3, in preparation. We will then open a discussion with the group about what polyglossia means for us who work in early modern studies, how it can help us think the triangulation between languages, lands and nations in an era of commerce, colonisation and conflict, and in particular the place of English and England within the British Isles and beyond, put in geographical and linguistic perspective with other languages and nations, near and far.

About the Speakers

Laetitia Sansonetti is Senior Lecturer in English (Translation Studies) at Université Paris Nanterre and a junior fellow of Institut Universitaire de France. Her research bears on the reception of classical and continental texts in early modern England, language learning, poetry and rhetoric and questions of authorship and authority. Her current research project on translation and polyglossia in early modern England (https://tape1617.hypotheses.org/) is funded by a five-year grant from Institut Universitaire de France.

Ladan Niayesh is Professor of Early Modern Studies at the University of Paris (ex-Paris Diderot) and a member of the LARCA research centre of the CNRS (UMR 8225). Her research focuses on Early Modern travel writing and travel drama, more specifically in connection to Muscovy and Persia. Her latest publications include Three Romances of Eastern Conquest (Manchester University Press, 2018) and Eastern Resonances (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), coedited with Claire Gallien. She currently coedits the Persian travels of the Sherley brothers with Kurosh Meshkat and Alasdair MacDonald for the Hakluyt Society.

Other speakers will include: 

Charlotte Coffin is Senior Lecturer in early modern English literature and culture at Université Paris-Est Créteil and a member of Institut des Mondes Anglophone, Germanique et Roman (IMAGER). Her research focuses on the reception of classical texts in early modern England and the uses of classical mythology in drama by Shakespeare, Heywood and their contemporaries. She is interested in matters of circulation, intertextuality, book history and theatre history. Recent publications include five entries for the Arden dictionary of Shakespeare’s classical mythology (forthcoming in 2024), a chapter in Thomas Heywood and the Classical Tradition (Manchester University Press, 2021) and a special issue of Études Épistémè on The Politics of Form in Early Modern Europe (2021), coedited with Paloma Bravo and Séverine Delahaye-Grélois. She also coedited Interweaving Myths in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Manchester University Press, 2017) with Janice Valls-Russell and Agnès Lafont. 
 
Chloë Houston is Associate Professor of Early Modern Drama in the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading. Her research focuses on the portrayal of cultural and religious difference in early modern literature and performance, and she has published a number of articles on the representation of Persia in English plays and travel writings in the early modern period. Her latest monograph, Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530-1699: The Imagined Empire, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2023.
 
Agnès Lafont is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern Studies at Université Paul Valéry-Montpellier  3 and a member of the Institut de Recherche sur la Renaissance, l’âge Classique et les Lumières (UMR 5186 CNRS). She works on the reception of classical myths in Renaissance poetry, drama (in the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries John Lyly, George Peele and Christopher Marlowe), and mythography. She studies the ways in which direct and indirect circulations of classical models (mostly Ovidian) shape English reception from the 1550s to the 1620s. She wrote her unpublished PhD on the myth of Diana in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama (‘Visages de Diane dans le théâtre élisabéthain et jacobéen (1560-1616)’) and has published several articles on mythology. She edited Shakespeare’s Erotic Mythology and Ovidian Renaissance Culture (Routledge, 2013), co-edited (with J. Valls-Russell and Ch. Coffin), Interweaving Myths in Shakespeare and his contemporaries (Manchester University Press, 2017), and co-edited (with M.-P. Noël and P. Pontier), ‘Autour des mythes de Thésée et de Perséphone. Tradition, Transferts, Transmissions (Antiquité-XVIIe siècle)’ (Les Cahiers du Théâtre Antique 22, 4, 2021). She is currently preparing the edition of The Maid’s Metamorphosis (Anonymous, 1600) for Manchester University Press. She is assistant editor for Cahiers Elisabéthains.
 

Sophie Lemercier-Goddard is Associate Professor of English at Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon. Her research focuses on issues of space, identity, translation in early modern drama but also on voyages of exploration in the period. She has published several articles on Shakespeare and has written on English travel writing, especially on the search for the Northwest passage. She has co-edited with S. Chiari John Webster’s ‘Dismal Tragedy’: The Duchess of Malfi Reconsidered (2019) and “Work, work your thoughts”: Henry V revisited (2021).

 
Rémi Vuillemin is Senior Lecturer in early modern English literature at Université de Strasbourg. The author of a monograph on Michael Drayton’s sonnet sequences, Le Recueil pétrarquiste à l’ère du maniérisme: poétique des sonnets de Michael Drayton, 1594–1619 (2014), his work bears on the early modern English sonnet, its reception past and present, and early modern poetic theory. Recently, he has co-edited two collective volumes, The Early Modern English Sonnet (Manchester University Press, 2020), and Language Commonality and Literary Communities in Early Modern England (Brepols, 2022). He has just finished writing a monograph on the framing of lyric collections.

This online seminar will take place on 16 May, 10am-11.30pm CEST (UTC +2).

SEM 28/03/2024, 17h30: Julie Vanparys-Rotondi (UCA), “Katherine Parr et son entourage féminin face aux tensions confessionnelles dans l’Angleterre du XVIème siècle”

La Réforme anglaise au féminin, Katherine Parr, Elizabeth Tyrwhit et Anne Askew

Le Paris Early Modern Seminar aura le plaisir de recevoir Julie Vanparys-Rotondi (Université Clermont-Auvergne) pour la présentation de son ouvrage La réforme anglaise au féminin – Katherine Parr, Elizabeth Tyrwhit et Anne Askew, publié aux Presses universitaires de Strasbourg en 2023.

La rencontre aura lieu de 17h30 à 19h en Salle du Conseil (Maison de Recherche de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 4 rue des Irlandais 75005).

Les discutant.e.s seront Aurélie Griffin (USN) et Guillaume Coatalen (CYU).

 
Présentation de l’ouvrage  La réforme anglaise au féminin – Katherine Parr, Elizabeth Tyrwhit et Anne Askew (Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 2023)
 
Cet ouvrage étudie la figure et l’engagement de trois femmes dont le rôle fut notable, sous diverses formes, dans le mouvement de la Réforme protestante en Angleterre. Pour la première fois, sont mises en parallèle les démarches de la reine Katherine Parr (c. 1512-1548), d’Anne Askew (1521-1546) et d’Elizabeth Tyrwhit (c. 1519-1578), actrice peu connue de la Réforme anglaise et proche du mouvement puritain, que cette étude croisée permet de faire découvrir au public francophone. En effet, l’auteure entrelace les destins de ces trois femmes dans le contexte confessionnel délétère du XVIe siècle anglais, leurs témoignages de foi et leur influence auprès de leurs contemporains et au-delà.
 
Julie Vanparys-Rotondi est maîtresse de conférences au département d’études anglophones de l’université Clermont Auvergne. Elle est membre du centre de recherche de l’Institut d’histoire des représentations et des idées dans les modernités (IHRIM-UMR 5317 du CNRS). Ses travaux portent sur les questions religieuses en Angleterre au début de la période moderne. Parallèlement, elle s’intéresse à l’histoire des sciences et des pratiques agricoles dans les manuels d’agronomie anglais de la première modernité et à leurs liens avec la Réforme.

Séance PEMS du 15/02/24, 17h30-19h: Line Cottegnies et al., Présentation de l’édition numérique du MS 787 de la Bibliothèque Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Douai (Sorbonne Université, University of Victoria)

 

Par Line Cottegnies, en collaboration avec Côme Saignol, Béatrice Rouchon, Ada Souchu, Nicolas Thibault,  Emma Bartel, John Delsinne et Louise Fang
 
Modératrice: Charlotte Coffin
 
Lieu: salle Claude Simon (Maison de la Recherche de La Sorbonne Nouvelle, 4 rue des Irlandais, 75005) de 17h30 à 19h
 

La Bibliothèque Marceline Desbordes-Valmore conserve depuis la fondation de la Bibliothèque de Douai un recueil manuscrit (sous la cote MS 787) de neuf pièces de théâtre anglaises transcrites par un scribe anonyme en 1694 et 1695, et qui provient très probablement d’une des nombreuses institutions anglaises, collèges ou monastères, qui existaient alors à Douai. Six de ces pièces sont de Shakespeare : trois comédies, Twelfth Night, As You Like It et The Comedy of Errors, suivies de trois tragédies, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar et Macbeth. Ce manuscrit présente un très grand intérêt pour les spécialistes de Shakespeare et pour les historiens étudiant la vie des catholiques anglais, les collèges de la période de la première modernité ou l’histoire du théâtre. Notre projet, commencé pendant la crise sanitaire, arrive au terme de sa première phase, la première partie des pièces étant mises à la disposition du public. Il vise à offrir une édition numérique semi-diplomatique du texte, avec un appareil critique, des six pièces de Shakespeare dans un premier temps (seconde livraison des trois pièces restantes, printemps 2024). L’équipe du projet, fruit d’une collaboration entre Sorbonne Université, l’Université de Victoria (Canada) et la Bibliothèque Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, est dirigée par Line Cottegnies, et composée au 1er janvier 2024 de: Emma Bartel (jeune docteure, SU), John Dessine (Doctorant, SU), Louise Fang (MCF Paris-Nord), Béatrice Rouchon (Doctorante, SU) Côme Saignol (développeur), Ada Souci (Masterante, SU), Nicolas Thibault (Doctorant, SU). 

CFP: LRS/ PEMS One-day Conference, “London Locations”, 14 June 2024, Birkbeck

London Locations: Urban Geography, Creative Opportunities and Literary Representations

London Renaissance Seminar / Paris Early Modern Seminar One-day Conference

14 June 2024

Room 106

43 Gordon Square, WC1H 0PD

Birkbeck, University of London

Hand-coloured map of London cut from 1635 edition of Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg, Civitatis Orbis Terrarum.  MAP L85c no.27 (Digital Image File 3371). Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license. For better image resolution, view the image in LUNA.

Source: Civitates orbis terrarum. Public Domain Mark 1.0 https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/view-of-london-in-civitates-orbis-terrarum

 

What did London locations mean to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century people, and what do they mean to contemporary scholars?

Exploring both aspects of London’s places, this one-day conference considers the many meanings of London’s places for literary and cultural research. As a hugely expanding metropolis and the centre of printing, law, playing and the court as well as offering key opportunities to clerics and religious dissidents, London locations can be significant in many ways. Please tell us about well-known and notorious places – St Paul’s, the playhouses, the court – or about corners and streets we have forgotten, misunderstood and overlooked. You might want to find out more about where your author landed, how she lived in Cheapside, Stepney or Edmonton; how a printer worked; where ballads were sold, how a comedy uses London’s streets. You might want to tell us about the City of London or its suburbs and close villages, and speak about London’s evolving geography and architecture before and after the Great Fire. How did artists and writers inhabit its streets and how was their work inspired by it? Which London Locations facilitated the creation of networks for artists? We are keen to hear about primary material and located research as we think about whether London is a cosmopolis, global centre, birthplace of empire.

At the same time, we want to know how we should approach these London locations and we welcome papers considering how we should theorise London’s places and what London’s locations suggest about its place in the world.

Papers will be between 15 and 20 minutes (length tbc) and we welcome proposals from scholars at all career stages. We are keen to have abstracts from historians, art historians and literary scholars. Please send an abstract of 150-200 words stating the location or locations you explore, the main terrain of your argument and what you want to discuss and a short biographical note, to s.wiseman@bbk.ac.uk, e.lauenstein@bbk.ac.uk and aurelie.griffin@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr by Friday 5 April 2024.

 

Jeudi 23 Novembre 2023, 17h30-19h, Nandini Das: “Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire”

Séance organisée par : Université Paris-Cité

NB: la séance aura lieu de 17h30 à 19h à l’Université Paris-Cité, bâtiment Olympe de gouges (place Paul Ricoeur, 75013 Paris), salle 830.

When Thomas Roe arrived in India in 1616 as James I’s first ambassador
to the Mughal Empire, the English barely had a toehold in the
subcontinent. Their understanding of South Asian trade and India was
sketchy at best, and, to the Mughals, they were minor players on a
very large stage. Roe was representing a kingdom that was beset by
financial woes and deeply conflicted about its identity as a unified
‘Great Britain’ under the Stuart monarchy. Meanwhile, the court he
entered in India was wealthy and cultured, its dominion widely
considered to be one of the greatest and richest empires of the world.
This book offers a fascinating history of Roe’s four years in India,
an insider’s view of a Britain in the making, a country whose imperial
seeds were just being sown. It is a story of palace intrigue and
scandal, lotteries and wagers that unfolds as global trade begins to
stretch from Russia to Virginia, from West Africa to the Spice Islands
of Indonesia. The book explores the art, literature, sights and sounds of Jacobean London and Imperial India. It reveals Thomas Roe’s time in the Mughal Empire to be a turning point in history, and offers a rich and radical challenge to our understanding of Britain and its early empire.

Discutante: Ladan Niayesh