On Tuesday (9th) Dr Vladimir Brljak (University of Cambridge) will speak on Allegorical Poetics in England after 1600: Fishing in the Dead Water. G-R06/07, all welcome!

Dismissed early on as fallow and insignificant by the Edwardian pioneers of the subject, the earlier seventeenth century remains a neglected and misunderstood episode in the history of English poetics and literary criticism – the ‘Dead Water in English Criticism’, in George Saintsbury’s memorable phrase. The talk will challenge this received view and explore more profitable alternatives, with particular attention to the question of the allegorical conception of imaginative literature in the period’s critical thought.

Vladimir Brljak studied at Zagreb (BA) and Warwick (PhD), and is now Thole Research Fellow in English at Trinity Hall. He works mainly on English literary and intellectual history, 1500-1700, with particular interests in allegory, poetics, and the work of John Milton.