Folly’s Family, Folly’s Children (La famille, les enfants de la Folie)
Fourteenth Round Table on Tudor Theatre
Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, Université de Tours
3-4 September, 2015

Following the two preceding Round Tables on Tudor Theatre, which concerned different aspects of folly (including madness) on stage (“Folly and Politics” [September 2011], “The Discourses of Folly” [September 2013]), it is planned to conclude the programmed series of three thematically linked conferences with a study of the associations and (af)filiations of pertinent characters or aspects of the motif itself.

In certain fifteenth-century English moralities, one finds, in the staging of allegorical forms of evil (devils, sins, vices, figures of temptation) groups of figures, more or less hierarchised and more or less suggestive of lineage or family. This is the case, for instance, in The Castle of Perseverance, where the Seven Deadly Sins are grouped according to the three traditional enemies of man (the World, the Flesh and the Devil). In a superficially lighter vein, but still with deadly serious spiritual implications, the character of Mischief in Mankind takes on a quasi-paternal role as head of the band of vices, while behind him looms the very principle of evil in the form of Titivillus.

To the extent that evil in such moralities is regularly characterised as at once comic and non-sensical – contrary to divine reason – there is an obvious link, however variable and tenuous, between such elements and the discourses and behaviours associated with folly in the Tudor and Stuart theatres. That point has often been developed. But it is apparent, as well, that later stagings of folly often likewise foreground groups and affiliations. In the Tudor interludes, the Vice-function is frequently multiplied or seconded (as also in Lyndsay’s Satyre). In the later drama, folly may frankly advertise its different forms and expressions (witness Jaques’ catalogue of different types of melancholy in As You Like It), while the relations among characters who exemplify it may become an instrument of signification in itself. One thinks of the relation implied in many tragedies between the folly of various evil-doers and that of those characters who seek to avenge themselves. In the comedies, too, folly is often plural. Shakespeare shows different sorts of fools (including jesters) together; Ben Jonson gathers incarnations of various “humours”, or indeed juxtaposes exploiters and victims of folly according to an organisation quasi-familial (Volpone, The Alchemist).

This fourteenth Round Table proposes to analyse the associations or groupings which develop around folly in the English theatre from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century. The broad objective is to sketch out a chronological typology of the phenomenon which will shed light not only on dramaturgical practices but also on larger questions of genre, culture and ideology.

Proposals (200 words) for thirty-minute papers in English should be directed to Richard Hillman (rhillman@sfr.fr) by 15 September 2014.

Posterity in France, 1650-­1800
University of Cambridge
Thursday 19 March, 2015

‘La postérité pour le philosophe, c’est l’autre monde de l’homme religieux.’

So writes Diderot to the sculptor Etienne Falconet in early 1766. Their long correspondence on
the subject of posterity is just one response to a topic that pervades cultural production in
eighteenth‐century France: from the Encyclopédie’s aim to convey to the future not only human knowledge but also the names of its creators, through Rousseau’s desire to control his posthumous image in his Confessions, to the celebration of the first literary centenaries, which gave contemporary writers cause to think on their own legacies. The desire to be remembered was nothing new in the period: as far back as Horace’s claim in 23BC that ‘I shall not wholly die’, writers and artists had been imagining the afterlife that would be available to them through their works.

This one‐day conference, though, sets out to investigate the specificity of the idea of future glory for French cultural producers in the period 1650­‐1800, when there seems to be a suggestive confluence of social and intellectual changes: the growth of the public sphere, a new concept of an exemplary ‘grand homme’ focusing on moral and intellectual achievement rather than high birth or military might, a context of declining patronage and de‐institutionalisation, and an increasing secularism, with the attendant questions about the afterlife of the soul.

Topics to be addressed could include:

• The specific features of the concept of posterity developed in the period.
• How a consciousness of posterity affects how and what people write – both as individuals and in terms
• of broader cultural trends.
• How the lure of posterity relates to an individual’s social self-­‐positioning in life.
• Whether writers and artists hold a particularly privileged position in the quest to be remembered.
• The extent to which new cultures of mourning and commemoration influence or are influenced by contemporary writings on posterity.
• The relationship between posterity and the religious afterlife in the thought of the period.

Papers may be given in English or French, and should last 20 minutes.
Abstracts of 200-­300 words should be sent to earlymodernposterity@gmail.com by Monday 6 October 2014. Questions may also be addressed to the organisers at this address.

Contributions from early-­career scholars and postgraduates are particularly welcome.

Happiness, Joy and Pleasure Conference
The University of Sydney
27-28 November 2014

We call for papers that interrogate the meaning of happiness, pleasure, and joy from interdisciplinary perspectives including but not limited to gender studies, literature, film, media, history, philosophy, health, economics, law, education, science and psychology.

Keynote speakers:

• Dr. Chris Bishop (Australian National University)
• Associate Professor Louise D’Arcens (University of Wollongong)

Some questions papers could address include:

• What is happiness (or joy or pleasure) and what does it mean for different people?
• How is happiness constructed, experienced, performed, and represented through different histories, cultures, identities, and genders?
• How do we experience happiness through our sexualities, masculinities, femininities, and / or trans-identities?
• Do we have a ‘right to happiness’ as enshrined, for example, in the American Constitution?
• Is the restriction of happiness or pleasure a violation of human rights?
• Can and should the law legislate for happiness?
• What are the tyrannies of discourses of happiness?
• Is happiness a chimera?
• How is happiness represented in popular culture?
• Who has the power to define happiness and who does not?
• What are the links between gender, happiness, health and well-being?

Email an abstract (of 500 words or fewer) outlining your paper, a brief bio and your affiliation to: Chenoa.Hunter@sydney.edu.au

Abstracts due 5pm Friday 19 September.

Masculinities in the British Landscape Conference
Harlaxton Manor, Lincolnshire
14-17 May 2015

Conference Website

The Masculinities in the British Landscape Conference will be held at Harlaxton Manor, University of Evansville, outside of Grantham, Lincolnshire, from 14-17 May 2015.

Keynote speaker: Professor Howard Williams on ‘From Stonehenge to the National Memorial Arboretum: Megaliths and Martial Masculinity in the British Landscape.’ Find out more about Prof. Williams here.

The gendered landscape is a topic ready for exploration. This conference seeks to explore current and historical concepts of masculinities in the British landscapes, geographically and historically broadly conceived. From depictions of masculine control to landscapes of masculine employment, the conference wishes to explore the various ways masculinity can and has been marked on the landscape and expressed itself in landscape terms. As such, this conference seeks a wide range of papers covering the topic. Proposals will be accepted from all eras from the prehistoric to the contemporary. The geographic area covered will be not only the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, but also the historic scope of ‘Britishness,’ including former British Empire states in their colonial and post-colonial periods.

Proposals are encouraged from any disciplinary field, including (but not limited to) archaeology, art history, criminology, history, literature, philosophy, sociology and theology. Topics might include:

• The naval seascape
• Sculpted and symbolic landscapes
• Agricultural landscapes
• Ritualized landscapes
• Gender, crime and urban topography
• Employment and land
• Geographic concepts of masculinity
• Masculinity, empire and the landscape
• Religious masculinity and the monastic landscape
• Landscapes of masculinity through war, rebellion and protest
• Textual depictions of masculinities and landscapes

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers or 3-paper panels exploring any aspect of masculinities in the British landscape. Please email proposals of approximately 200 words (or for panels, 500 words including paper abstracts) to masclandscapes2015@gmail.com by 1 December 2015. Informal queries can be made to Dr Edward Bujak at ebujak@harlaxton.ac.uk or Dr Katherine Weikert at katherine.weikert@winchester.ac.uk. View the Call for Papers online here. Registration will open in late 2014.

Renaissance Cardinals: Diplomats and Patrons in the Early-Modern World
Saint Mary’s University, Twickenham, London
13-14 March 2015

Saint Mary’s University Twickenham is hosting an international conference on Renaissance cardinals as diplomats and patrons. The conference will mark the 500th anniversary of Thomas Wolsey’s being made a cardinal by Pope Leo X. As ‘Princes of the Church’, cardinals were almost invariably important politicians and international representatives of the Papacy, of princely, national, republican and civic regimes, and of their own families. The conference, organised by the School of Arts and Humanities, will take an innovative, interdisciplinary, approach to cardinals as ‘super-diplomats’, powerful political and cultural brokers, who played a vital role in the transfer and adaptation of ideas and artefacts within and beyond their primary sphere of Western Europe. Proposals on any aspect of the role of cardinals as early-modern papal, princely, civic and dynastic representatives and patrons (rather than as ecclesiastics per se) will be considered. Papers from research students and early-career researchers are especially welcome.

Some suggested areas of enquiry and discussion include:

• Ritual and protocol in diplomatic encounters between cardinals, secular diplomats, and rulers
• The development, training and careers as diplomats of individual cardinals
• The role of Church diplomats in the circulation of texts, literary ideas and artefacts
• The representation of cardinals as diplomats in literary texts and art
• Early modern legal and philosophical attitudes to churchmen/cardinals as diplomats
• The artistic and architectural patronage of cardinals, as diplomats
• The impact of the European Reformation in all its phases on the diplomatic practices and traditions of the Catholic Church
• The part played by cardinals in Western Europe’s encounter with the world beyond.

Enquiries and Proposals for 20 minute papers or panels of 3-4 papers should be sent to Glenn.Richardson@smuc.ac.uk or Eugenia.Russell@smuc.ac.uk by 15 September 2014.

Individual paper proposals should be no more than 300 words. Panel proposals should include abstracts of all papers (max 300 words) and a brief rationale (max 100 words) for the panel. All proposals should be accompanied by a short statement of affiliation and career. Delegates will be notified by 15 October 2014.

“Shakespeare’s Europe – Europe’s Shakespeare(s)”
European Shakespeare Research Association Congress 2015
University of Worcester, UK
29 June-2 July, 2015

Conference Website

The traffic of Shakespeare’s stage invites spectators and readers to travel to different places, imagined and real. Italian and French cities – Verona, Venice, Mantua, Padua, Florence, Milan, Rome, Navarre, Roussillon, Paris, Marseilles – set the scenes of his plays. Rome, Athens, Ephesus and Troy occasion travels in time. On Britain’s map – divided in King Lear – other places are mapped: Scotland, England, Windsor, the Forest of Arden, York. Viola arrives on ‘the shore’ of Illyria while, in The Winter’s Tale, the action shifts between Bohemia and Sicilia. Othello sets up camp in Cyprus and Don Pedro returns, victorious, to Messina. Within the confines of one play, Hamlet, too, maps Europe: from Elsinore, Laertes requests permission to return to France; the Mousetrap is set in Vienna, which will become the setting for Measure for Measure; Hamlet is sent to England, and on his way encounters the Norwegian army marching across Denmark on its way to Poland.

Time and geographical travels map a whole continent and its social, political and cultural exchanges – a feature that Shakespeare’s plays shared with his early modern contemporaries as much as they have with his readers, editors, translators, spectators, film adapters and critical commentators since.

The 2015 ESRA conference continues the long-standing dialogue between Shakespeare’s Europe and Europe’s Shakespeare(s). It asks scholars to take a look at the wider playwriting context of the early modern period and the European reception of Shakespeare as a subject that has been continuously developing, not least due to Europe’s several recent remappings. Twenty-five years since the first events that focused exclusively on European Shakespeares (Antwerp 1990) and Shakespeare in the New Europe (Sofia 1992), ESRA 2015 invites a look back at 425 years of European Shakespeare and towards a vigorous debate on what Shakespeare means for Europe today, as well as on ESRA’s place in Shakespeare Studies, European and beyond.

We welcome proposals for papers in the following seminars (please see the CFP for details of seminars). Please submit an abstract (200-300 words) and a brief biography (150 words) by 1 December 2014 to all conveners of the seminar of your choice. All participants will be notified about the acceptance of their proposals by 1 March 2015. The deadline for submitting the completed seminar papers (3,000 words) is 1 May 2015.