{"id":6191,"date":"2025-10-18T16:10:56","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T16:10:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=6191"},"modified":"2025-10-18T16:11:33","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T16:11:33","slug":"upcoming-bars-digital-events-volcanic-romanticism-shelleys-anni-mirabiles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=6191","title":{"rendered":"Upcoming BARS Digital Events: Volcanic Romanticism & Shelley\u2019s Anni Mirabiles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Volcanic Romanticism (30 October 7PM UK time)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.eventbrite.com\/e\/bars-digital-events-volcanic-romanticism-tickets-1810749413239?aff=oddtdtcreator<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the \u2018Year Without A Summer\u2019 of 1816, a remarkable meeting of minds took place at the Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva. Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley (then Mary Godwin), Claire Clairmont, and John William Polidori spent much of the time indoors, sheltering from the rain, and engaging in discussions that would lead to some of the most influential works of British Romanticism, including Byron\u2019s \u2018Darkness\u2019, Mary Shelley\u2019s Frankenstein <\/em>and The Last Man<\/em>, and numerous poems by Percy Shelley. The Diodati Circle were unaware that the unusually cold and stormy weather that summer had been largely caused by the massive eruption of the Indonesian volcano Mount Tambora the previous year. Nonetheless, the anomalous weather, in combination with the sublime Alpine landscape and their intensely speculative conversations, had a powerful impact on their work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The aim of this panel is to offer a new perspective on the Diodatic Circle by reflecting on the relationship between weather, climate, and planetary volatility in their writings of 1816 and after. It will address, in particular, how they understood the volcanic as a sublime, apocalyptic force, and how it inflected their powerful visions of the future. Attention will also be paid to the longer history of Romantic responses to vulcanism and planetary catastrophe.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Presentations:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 \u2018From Diodati to the End of the World: The Volcanic Origins of The Last Man<\/em>\u2019 <\/em>\u2013 <\/strong>Dilara Kalkan (Ataturk University)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 \u2018Before Tambora: Cowper, the Laki Haze and the Emergence of Volcanic Romanticism\u2019 <\/strong>\u2013 Katerina Liontou (University of Leeds)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 \u2018\u201cThe veil of life and death\u201d \u2013 The Volcanic Sublimity of Shelley\u2019s Mountains\u2019 <\/em>\u2013 Chloe Melvin (University of Birmingham)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 \u2018\u201cMeteorological Imaginations\u201d and the Solastalgic Skies of Percy Shelley\u2019 \u2013 Kate Nankervis (University of York)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chair: David Higgins (University of Leeds)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

———————————————————————————————-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shelley\u2019s Anni Mirabiles: The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley (12 November 6PM UK time)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.eventbrite.co.uk\/e\/shelleys-anni-mirabiles-the-complete-poetry-of-percy-bysshe-shelley-tickets-1782940165029?aff=ebdsoporgprofile<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our Panellists:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Neil Fraistat (Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Nora Crook (Professor Emerita, Anglia Ruskin University)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Stephen Behrendt (Professor Emeritus, University of Nebraska-Lincoln)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr Madeleine Callaghan (University of Sheffield)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chair: Dr Amanda Blake Davis (University of Derby)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This roundtable will celebrate the publication of the latest volume, Volume IV, of the acclaimed Johns Hopkins University Press edition of Percy Bysshe Shelley\u2019s poetry, covering the years 1818 to early 1820, the first phase of Shelley\u2019s Italian period. Volume IV contains some of the masterpieces that Shelley produced during the first part of these years: Julian and Maddalo<\/em>, inspired by conversations conducted on horseback near Venice between himself and the self-exiled Byron; The Cenci<\/em>, an indictment of tyranny, domestic and political, probably the most actable of Romantic dramas and containing one of the most chilling studies of a psychopathic sexual abuser in nineteenth-century English literature; The Mask of Anarchy<\/em>, the \u201cgreatest poem of political protest ever written in English\u201d (too inflammatory to be published in 1819); Peter Bell the Third<\/em>, a brilliant satire on Wordsworth; lesser known poems like his eclogue for women\u2019s voices, Rosalind and Helen<\/em>, and some of his best known shorter poems (\u201cEngland in 1819,\u201d \u201cLove\u2019s Philosophy,\u201d and \u201cStanzas, Written in dejection\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This event also commemorates the late Professor Stuart Curran, who died in October 2024. He described Shelley\u2019s annus mirabilis<\/em> as the year in which \u201cthe poet discovered his genius in the fertile warmth of Italy and produced a series of works which, for diversity and brilliance, have seldom been matched by any writer\u201d (Shelley\u2019s Annus Mirabilis: The Maturing of an Epic Vision<\/em>, xiii). Amongst his innumerable scholarly achievements and contributions to Romantic Studies over 55 years, Professor Curran was a major contributing editor to Volume IV, which thus contains his last academic writings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We anticipate lively conversation and discussion about some of the major works of Shelley\u2019s anni mirabiles<\/em>, including some new discoveries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Volume IV of The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley<\/em> is available to pre-order here: https:\/\/www.press.jhu.edu\/books\/title\/9831\/complete-poetry-percy-bysshe-shelley<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Volcanic Romanticism (30 October 7PM UK time) https:\/\/www.eventbrite.com\/e\/bars-digital-events-volcanic-romanticism-tickets-1810749413239?aff=oddtdtcreator In the \u2018Year Without A Summer\u2019 of 1816, a remarkable meeting of minds took place at the Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva. Lord… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6191"}],"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\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6191"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6194,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6191\/revisions\/6194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}