{"id":1355,"date":"2016-09-16T08:28:51","date_gmt":"2016-09-16T08:28:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=1355"},"modified":"2016-09-16T08:29:03","modified_gmt":"2016-09-16T08:29:03","slug":"conference-report-part-i-of-the-coleridge-summer-conference-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=1355","title":{"rendered":"Conference Report: Part I of the Coleridge Summer Conference 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

Report from the\u00a015th<\/sup> Coleridge Summer Conference<\/a>\u00a0(Part I)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thank you\u00a0to Jonatan Gonz\u00e1lez (@jonatangonzg<\/a>) for this engaging account of the 2016 Coleridge Summer Conference. Jonatan is a first-year PhD student at the University of La Rioja researching Anglo-Spanish literary relations and the reception of British Romantic poetry in continental Europe. His thesis examines the afterlife of William Wordsworth in nineteenth and twentieth-century Spain.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

This part of\u00a0Jonatan’s\u00a0report covers the first two days of the conference.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Hosted by the Friends of Coleridge (@FriendsofSTC<\/a>) at Will\u2019s Hall, University of Bristol, and held from the 1st<\/sup> to the 5th<\/sup> of August 2016, the 15th <\/sup>edition of the biennial Coleridge Summer Conference aimed at bringing together cutting-edge research on the literature of Coleridge\u2019s circle in Bristol and beyond. A tightly scheduled week that boasted fifty-three papers distributed over twenty-six panels and three keynote lectures, it made for an engaging, inspiring and friendly conference that bears witness to the fact that Coleridgeans are a warm and welcoming breed amongst Romanticists.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"15th<\/a>

15th Coleridge Summer Conference<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Will\u2019s<\/a>

Will\u2019s Hall, University of Bristol<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Following a special welcome address by the Academic Director of the conference, Tim Fulford, the first panel kicked off to a superb start. Focused on Coleridge\u2019s symbolic imagination, it featured two\u00a0absorbing papers by Michael Raigner and R. D. Hedley, which made for an engaging discussion about the impact of the Coleridgean concepts of imagination and symbol in the Romantic era. After that, the conference split in parallel sessions, with delegates having to choose, firstly, between Stuart Andrews\u2019s comprehensive examination of the representations of the Duke of Wellington and the Battle of Waterloo in the poetry, prose and correspondence of Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth; and Kiran Toor\u2019s discussion of the coincidences between the damned voyage of Jean-Baptiste Chappe d\u2019Auteroche in 1769 following the transit of Venus, and Coleridge\u2019s \u201cRime of the Ancient Mariner\u201d.<\/p>\n

The closing parallel sessions of the day included, on the one hand, Grace Rexroth\u2019s close work on the influence of James Beattie\u2019s writings on \u201cartificial memory\u201d upon Wordsworth\u2019s practice of associating poetry with architectural space, mediated through Coleridge\u2019s readings of the former; Gregory Leadbetter\u2019s remarkable paper on the connections between Thomas McFarland and Coleridge\u2019s thinking on education as the cultivation of the mind; and Tom Duggett\u2019s thorough consideration of the links between Coleridge\u2019s On the Constitution of the Church and State<\/em> and the historical fiction of Walter Scott and Ann Radcliffe. The other final panel of the day featured Joanna Taylor\u2019s superb discussion of the use of grammatical symbols in Coleridge\u2019s private correspondence concerning his infamous climb down Broad Stand on August 1802 to illustrate how, for the poet, the body\u2019s reactions to and impact on the landscape have the potential to alter his imaginative responses to it; Kimberly Page-Jones and her fascinating examination of melancholia in Coleridge\u2019s 1803 autumnal fragments written after a nightmarish 263-mile Scottish walk; and Robin Jarvis\u2019s remarkable account of Coleridge\u2019s and Wordsworth\u2019s adventuresome Rhine Tour of 1828 as an example of the persistence of their wanderlust in old age.<\/p>\n

After a brief coffee break came Peter Manning\u2019s engaging first keynote lecture of the conference, \u201cEdward Irving: Coleridge, Sign, and Symbol\u201d, which kept all delegates glued to their seats with an excellent examination of the Scottish\u2019s clergyman\u2019s gain of influence over Coleridge and his loss of it over the course of the years. The programme for the first day closed with an official reception sponsored by the University of Bristol Centre for Victorian and Romantic Studies, followed by dinner in the college\u2019s premises, and the first of many nights spent at Will\u2019s Hall pub.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Tom<\/a>

Tom Duggett<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Peter<\/a>

Peter Manning<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

After a hearty English breakfast on Tuesday morning, the conference crew had to make the choice between heading to the Conference Hall for Brandon Chao-Chi Yen\u2019s examination of the iconographical presence of trees in the poetry of Coleridge, Hannah Dow\u2019s close reading of Dorothy Wordsworth\u2019s later journals in relation to Modernist poetry, and Bethan Roberts\u2019s enthralling exploration of the relationship between poetry, science and the environment, literary and natural history, manifest in Coleridge\u2019s \u201cThe Nightingale\u201d; or going to the Lounge of Will\u2019s Hall for Monica Bushling\u2019s paper on the theme of guilty love in \u201cThe Pains of Sleep\u201d and Christabel<\/em>, Daniel Laron\u2019s thorough engagement with Coleridge\u2019s 1798 fragment \u201cThe Wanderings of Cain\u201d to uncover the relations between burial practices and state power in early-nineteenth century England, and Paul Cheshire\u2019s paper on the connection between William Gilbert\u2019s The Hurricane: a Theosophical Western Eclogue<\/em> and Thomas Taylor\u2019s Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries.<\/em><\/p>\n

With the discussion of the second parallel sessions of the morning this conference report becomes slightly biased, as the first panel featured my own paper, which engaged with the afterlife of the Coleridge persona in the nineteenth-century Spanish press. Also presenting were Adam Neikirk, giving a study of Coleridge\u2019s 1796 Poems on Various Subjects<\/em>, and Deven Parker explaining her remarkable work on the way in which early nineteenth-century live drama performances and mechanical stage technologies shaped the writing and production of Coleridge\u2019s 1813 Remorse<\/em>. The other parallel panel opened with a discussion of Coleridge\u2019s deployment of the sublime in On the Constitution of the Church and State<\/em> in charge of Murray J. Evans, followed by Sharon Tai\u2019s on the development of Coleridge\u2019s philosophical theology in the comprehensive paper light of the changes he made over the years in the various versions of \u2018Religious Musings\u2019, \u2018The Eolian Harp\u2019, and \u2018This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison\u2019; and Jane Bolin\u2019s close work on the way in which repetition and reflection worked for and against the endings of \u201cKubla Khan\u201d and Christabel<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The following parallel sessions featured Anastasia Stelse\u2019s careful reading of Dorothy Wordsworth\u2019s use of aural qualities in her journals as denoting more poetic qualities than her standard verse poetry, followed by Sue Edney\u2019s consideration of William Barnes\u2019s poetry as an application of a Romantic linguistic philosophy to the Victorian cultural and social dilemmas. Anna Mercer opened up the other panel with a terrific examination of the complex nuances that feature in the poetical dialogue between Coleridge and his daughter Sara, focusing on the conversation poems as well as on \u201cPoppies\u201d and \u201cEdith Asleep\u201d, thereby illustrating how though tackling similar themes, Sara\u2019s poetry is marked by her unique perspective and tone. This paved the way for Jeffrey Barbeau\u2019s absorbing account of Sara Coleridge\u2019s usually-forgotten daughter Bertha Fanny Coleridge. His paper argued that a recovery of little-known manuscripts describing her life and death contributes to a fuller understanding of Sara\u2019s obsession with baptism and spiritual regeneration in the final decade of her life.<\/p>\n

Following such an intense morning of scholarly work, a chilled out afternoon awaited us Coleridgeans. The social programme featured a Romantic walk around Bristol, led by the wonderful authority on Romantic pedestrianism Robin Jarvis, and the knowledgeable Stuart Andrews, who made us travel back in time and feel as if we were actually walking alongside Coleridge and Southey. Some highlights included visits to the Georgian House Museum, Thomas Chatterton\u2019s House, as well as the former site of Joseph Cottle\u2019s bookshop on the corner of High Street and Corn Street, one of the most important literary landmarks that any Romanticist could think of. The city walk culminated with a visit to the impressive St Mary Redcliffe, where we were granted access to the Muniment Room where Chatterton\u00a0found, so he said, the manuscripts of the Thomas Rowley poems. The second day of the conference was over, and we all went back to Will\u2019s Hall for dinner, and another evening of networking at the college pub.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Robin<\/a>

Robin Jarvis<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Joseph<\/a>

Joseph Cottle\u2019s bookshop<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Part II will appear on the blog next week.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Report from the\u00a015th Coleridge Summer Conference\u00a0(Part I) Thank you\u00a0to Jonatan Gonz\u00e1lez (@jonatangonzg) for this engaging account of the 2016 Coleridge Summer Conference. Jonatan is a first-year PhD student at the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1355"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1355"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1367,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1355\/revisions\/1367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}