By danielcook by Daniel Cook When I moved to Scotland last year to take up a permanent post as a Lecturer in English at the University of Dundee I inherited a popular module entitled Romantic and Gothic Literature, 1760-1830. Of course, I was mightily excited to be teaching such a module, indeed to be teaching anything as […] …read more
By admin
We on the BARS Executive are still sad that Dr Angela Wright has recently left our number in order to become a Dark Empress (OK, co-President…) of the International Gothic Association. When not reigning, she is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield and has published widely on Romantic and Gothic topics. Below, we discuss her latest book, Britain, France and the Gothic, 1764-1820: The Import of Terror, which was published by Cambridge University Press earlier this year.
1) What was the genesis of Britain, France and the Gothic, 1764-1820?
I have had a long-standing fascination with the relationship between Britain and France. This fascination first started when I took my BA in English and French, and continued when I chose to do my doctorate between an English and a French department, with supervisors in both. I have always enjoyed the best of both nations, and spent several extended periods of my twenties on and off working or studying in France. When I spent a year in France at the age of 21, for example, I was intrigued by …read more
Professor Murdo Macdonald (University of Dundee)
This landscape painting by Turner was formerly known as “Welsh Mountain Landscape” – but does, in fact, depict a Scottish mountain scene: “The Traveller – Vide Ossian’s War of Caros” (1802).
We’re very excited to be welcoming Professor Murdo Macdonald to Romantic Realignments this week. He’s here to speak to us about the painting you see above: one which has been mistakenly claimed as a representation of Welsh – rather than Scottish – landscape for many years, and is only now being considered in relation to the Scottish legend and verse that inspired Turner to create it.
Abstract
The identification earlier this year of J. M. W. Turner’s lost ‘Ossian’ painting dating from 1802 (see Macdonald and Shanes, forthcoming) provides a starting point for noting Turner’s intense engagement with poetry throughout his career and allows one to give a new reading of his later Ossian-related work ‘Staffa: Fingal’s Cave’, exhibited in 1832. The fact that Turner’s 1802 painting became detached from its title may reflect the cultural politics surrounding the reception of Macpherson’s ‘Ossian’ at the time. Turner’s painting can now take its place as part of the response to ‘Ossian’ of artists throughout Europe.
Do come …read more
Source: http://romanticrealignments.blogspot.com/2013/11/week-7-significance-of-james.html
By admin
‘To search for what you already are is the most benighted of quests, and the most fated’
– Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence (1973)
We invite you to submit proposals for a conference on the legacies, receptions and dialogues of Romantic ideas, authors and works since 1900, to be held at the University of Sheffield on 17th January 2014.
DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS: 30TH NOVEMBER 2013
Keynote Speakers: Prof. Matthew Campbell (University of York) and Prof. Michael O’Neill (Durham University)
The day also includes a special concert featuring original settings of Romantic poetry composed and performed by students of the Department of Music. See programme in full post.
Marking forty years since Bloom’s provocative study on the enduring influences of Romantic writers, the University of Sheffield invites the submission of papers for a free one day conference on the receptions, legacies and dialogues of Romantic literature. The study of Romanticism and its legacies sprawls across periods, disciplines, and forms, and this conference will contribute to growing scholarship in this field. The AHRC-funded “Romantic Heirs” project has hosted events at the University of Sheffield and the University of Durham throughout 2013 with the aim of promoting the work of postgraduate and early-career researchers interested in this …read more
In case you missed it in emails, and with the deadline fast approaching, here’s a reminder of our Call for Postgraduate Speakers:
We warmly invite postgraduate students and early-career academics to submit 100-200 word abstracts for 20 to 30 minute papers, to take place in 2014 across a range of available dates.
We warmly invite postgraduate students and early-career academics to submit 100-200 word abstracts for 20 to 30 minute papers, to take place in 2014 across a range of available dates.
Papers can focus on the art, literature, ideas and philosophies of approximately 1780-1830, but the scope is by no means restricted to this period. We are also keen to encourage an interdisciplinary, international and transhistorical approach to studies of Romanticism. Our aim is to provide a forum – within a friendly, workshop setting – in which speakers can try out both new papers and more finished pieces, and in which lively discussion can flourish.
If you would like to be considered as a postgraduate student speaker at the seminar, please submit an abstract of 100-200 words to the current convenors by 30th November 2013.
Email submissions to Katherine Fender, Sarah Goode and Honor Rieley at: romantic.realignments@gmail.com
Source: http://romanticrealignments.blogspot.com/2013/11/call-for-postgraduate-speakers_21.html
By ericloy
At the Blake Archive, graduate students–and now, undergrads, too–participate deeply in the day-to-day happenings of transcription, encoding, and editing that are typical of digital projects. This fall, the Blake Archive North Division (BAND) welcomed a rather large influx of interested students to the University of Rochester. It presented positive problem for the [distinguished, good looking, still very young, etc.] senior members of the team: what do we do with these newbies?
I was one of the greenhorns in question. Coming from Creighton University and an assistantship with The Complete Letters of Henry James project, I had some foundational experience in editing, but I was still new to the pragmatics of the digital scene. With a general strategy towards quickly training new researchers like myself, recently acquired Blake letters were distributed among the new team members. The idea was that a letter–as a short, self-contained, historical object–could provide a microcosm to the editorial process, both specific to the Blake Archive and in general to digital editing.
In many respects, the strategy has been a success. After a few months, each new member is now nearing completion of their own letter. And because of the …read more
Source: http://blakearchive.wordpress.com/2013/11/20/letters-digital-editing/
By admin
A new issue of Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net (No. 61) has just been published, guest-edited by Tim Fulford and focusing on Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The issue includes the following essays:
Anya Taylor – Catherine the Great: Coleridge, Byron, and Erotic Politics on the Eastern Front
Alan Bewell – Coleridge and Communication
Alan Vardy – Coleridge on Broad Stand
Tim Fulford – Coleridge’s Visions of 1816: the Political Unconscious and the Poetic Fragment
By Honor Rieley We’re sorry to announce that this week’s talk by Paul Whickman has had to be cancelled due to illness.
We hope we’ll be able to reschedule this paper for a later date, so really it’s a postponement not a cancellation!
Have a great 6th week, and we hope to see you all next Thursday for Murdo Macdonald’s paper on Ossian and Turner.
Source: http://romanticrealignments.blogspot.com/2013/11/cancellation-notice-week-6-21-november.html
By admin
Dr Jane Darcy is currently a teaching fellow in the Department of English at University College London, where she was previously a British Academy postdoctoral fellow. Prior to that, she completed her doctorate at King’s College London. Below, we discuss her first monograph, Melancholy and Literary Biography, 1640-1816, which developed in unexpected directions from her thesis and which was published by Palgrave earlier this year.
1) You write in your introduction that your initial interest was in aesthetic representations of melancholy. How did your project evolve towards focusing specifically on biographies?
Like most people, I imagine, I’m drawn to what is minor key and elegiac in art and literature. And I’m always fascinated by details of the lives of writers, so many of whom seem to have suffered profoundly. In my thesis I looked at a range of writers from Dr Johnson to Thomas Carlyle and tried to trace evolving medical ideas of melancholy (or hypochondria, as it was often termed) by looking at what their first biographers made of the condition.
2) The book’s two sections focus on periods of distinctly different lengths, the first examining …read more
Source: http://www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=98
is the xml element we use to encode alternative spelling in our transcriptions of Blake’s writings. It’s what makes the Blake Archive’s search function forgiving. Say someone searches for all instances of the word “Tiger” in the Blake Archive. A choice tag is what would lead them to instances of the word “Tyger.”
But the more common search tags are the really mundane ones:
- abbreviations (“William” for “Willm”, “January” for “Jany”)
- non-standardized spellings (Blake has a habit of writing “recieved” and not “received”)
- words that are divided by line breaks (the word “accompa / nied” is written over two lines in one letter)
In the letter of 7 June 1825, Blake mentions the “D of C”, which we know to be an abbreviation for the “Dean of Canterbury.” Without a choice tag, users searching “Canterbury” would never be directed to that letter.
Editorial Questions
- Should we add a choice tag for words and names that have been abbreviated? (Yes.)
- Should we add a choice tag for regularized spelling? (Yes.)
- Okay, but should we regularize spelling to American English or British English if there’s an option? (If this comes up, I’d add a choice tag for both, just in …read more
Source: http://blakearchive.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/choice-tags-search-functions/