Tag Archives: law

Events This Week

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IN CAMBRIDGE

 

History of Material Texts Workshop

Monday 6 March, 12.30-2, Milstein Seminar Room, University Library

‘The Medical Book in the Nineteenth Century: From MS Casebooks to Mass Plagiarism’
A workshop led by Sarah Bull, Wellcome Trust Research Fellow, HPS

 

Middle English Graduate Seminar

Wednesday, 08/03/17, 5:15pm, English Faculty Room GR04

Rita Copeland (University of Pennsylvania), Enthymeme and Emotion from Aristotle to Hoccleve

 

Poetics Before Modernity

Tuesday, 7 March 2017, 5.15pm, Old Combination Room at Trinity College

Gavin Alexander (University of Cambridge)

“LYRIC POETICS?”

This paper is about lyric poetry’s place in classical and early modern poetics. That place looks less sure than does that of tragedy or epic—which may be Aristotle’s fault, or due to the nature of lyric; it clearly has something to do with the fact that lyric is hard to define and delimit. I question two common myths about lyric’s place in the system of poetic genres: that there has always been a straightforward and accepted tripartition of poetry into epic, dramatic, and lyric; and, conversely, that this tripartition was only a Romantic discovery. I also resist the direction of the “new lyric studies”, which attempts to challenge the usefulness of the category “lyric” to the understanding of various kinds of short poetry. I trace lyric’s presence in less familiar theoretical settings (grammar, rhetoric) in order to ask if we might consider such treatments as a part of the poetics of lyric. And I aim to show how the interplay between the paradigms and taxonomies of rhetoric and poetics contribute to lyric’s vexed (and rich) status in the history of literary theory. Do Sappho, Pindar, Horace, Petrarch, and Shakespeare actually have something in common that might be captured by the term “lyric”; or should ancient lyric can only be grouped with modern lyric of a strictly neoclassical bent? In considering why it has been difficult to agree about both what a lyric poem is and what features of form, content, mode, or method might characterise lyric, I will suggest how theoretical muddle might be contained by a larger clarity.

Gavin Alexander is Reader in Renaissance Literature in the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Christ’s College. His publications include Writing after Sidney: The Literary Response to Sir Philip Sidney, 1586-1640 (Oxford, 2006), editions of Sidney’s “Defence of Poesy” and Selected Renaissance Literary Criticism (London, 2004) and William Scott’s Model of Poesy (Cambridge, 2013), and the collection Renaissance Figures of Speech (Cambridge, 2007; with Sylvia Adamson and Katrin Ettenhuber).

 

Early Modern Interdisciplinary Seminar

Wednesday, 8th March, 12-1:15pm, English Faculty, Board Room

In Collaboration with the Centre for Mediaeval and Early Modern Law and Literature (CMEMLL)

Dr Maria Mendes (Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema, Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa) will present the following paper:

Praise with Purpose: Flattery in Early Modern England

Susceptibility to flattery has long been considered a character flaw, which is the reason those who believe it are usually described as being vain, proud, tyrannical or conceited. I will close-read Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, so as to question if Caesar’s failure to anticipate the conspirators’ plot is, as is usually thought, an illustration of his proneness to flattery or, as I hope to show, an example of the flatterer’s capacity to mirror one’s own mind. Flatterers might be very able in showing rhetorically what the flattered person’s ideal self would look like, and they might in turn tend to supplement rhetorical suggestion with their own desires and concerns. If this is the case, flattery is central to understanding that Julius Caesar describes a hermeneutic difficulty, and characterises the difficulties of knowing another’s mind.

 

Early Modern French Seminar

Friday, 10 March, 2-4pm, Clare College, Latimer Room

Phillip USHER (New York University)

Exterranean Insurgency in the Humanist Anthropocene

 

Early Modern British and Irish History Seminar

Wednesday, 8 March, 5.15pm, Graham Storey Room, Trinity Hall

Alice Soulieux-Evans (Wolfson),
‘“Because thou canst not walk in thy minster’s way”: cathedrals, conformity and the Church of England in the Restoration period’

 

 

IN LONDON

British History in the 17th Century Seminar (IHR)

Thursday, 9 March, 17:15, Pollard Room N301, 3rd floor, IHR, North block, Senate House

‘The Print that Binds: official print and personal record keeping in seventeenth-century England’
Frances Maguire (York)

 

 

Measure for Measure on Trial

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Shakespeare & the Law: Measure for Measure on Trial
Tuesday 15 March 18.00 – 20.00, Inner Temple Hall

Students from The Dickson Poon School of Law and King’s Department of English will perform a Shakespearean trial based on Measure for Measure at Inner Temple. The distinguished arbitrators will be Lord Judge, Lady Justice Arden and Executive Dean Professor David D Caron. The event, which is open to the public as well as King’s staff and students, concludes the Shakespeare & the Law module jointly taught by The Dickson Poon School of Law and the Department of English.

Measure for Measure, one of Shakespeare most performed plays, ends with a trial in which Angelo is the accused. The Judge, Duke Vincentio, is the ruler of Vienna. He has resumed his authority after an absence during which Angelo was in charge and committed the crimes he is accused of. At the end of the trial the Duke pardons Angelo.

This mock trial questions the legality of the Duke’s pardon of Angelo. Here the Prosecutors seek a reversal of the pardon granted Angelo and argue that the law should be strictly applied with Angelo found guilty of blackmail and corruption. The second part of the trial questions the Duke’s legal and moral responsibility for maladministration and for relinquishing his obligations as a ruler. Here the Prosecutors seek that the Court find the Duke guilty of dereliction of duty and that the Court declare void the Duke’s later trial at the end of Measure for Measure.

A scene from Measure to Measure will be also performed during the evening – II.iv. Isabella will be played by Remmie Milner, and Angelo will be played by Mike Evans.

For information contact Hannah Crawforth: hannah.crawforth@kcl.ac.uk

 

Graduate Lecture Series

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Friday 12th February, 1-2pm, GR06/07                                                              Discovering Richard III in Early Modern Legal Writing                                                    Jitka Štollová

The hasty burial of Richard III in Leicester in 1485 gave rise to one of the most fascinating literary-historical afterlives in English history. In the next two centuries, historians, poets, and playwrights examined and re-examined this controversial figure. Shakespeare’s mesmerising king-villain ultimately became the most iconic and influential portrayal: partly thanks to the intrinsic qualities of his play, partly to the rising popularity of Shakespeare, especially from the eighteenth century onwards. As a consequence, Shakespeare’s Richard III became our Richard III. Yet the seventeenth century has much more to say on this character.

My talk will focus on the representation of Richard III in seventeenth-century legal writing. This century witnessed vivid debates about the limits of royal and parliamentary powers under the Stuart kings, culminating in the conflict of both parties in the Civil Wars. The figure of Richard III became a field of theoretical study about the definition of tyranny and usurpation. But rather than simply confirming these labels, seventeenth-century legal scholarship found new perspectives for assessing this monarch and his rule. My talk will trace the influence of this revision in seventeenth-century authors, and will locate the position of Shakespeare’s Richard III in these debates.

This lecture is particularly relevant for the following papers: Part I, Paper 4 (English Literature and its Contexts, 1500-1700); Part I, Paper 5 (Shakespeare); Part II, Paper 7 (Early Modern Drama 1588-1642).

Interdisciplines: Drama, Economics and Law in Early Modern England, 17 October 2015

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beere-bayting_crop2Trust Room, Fitzwilliam College
Conference fee: £25 (full), £10 (students/unwaged) – includes lunch, tea/coffee
Deadline: Monday 12 October 2015

Interdisciplines: Drama, Economics and Law in Early Modern England is a one-day colloquium which seeks to examine intersections between literature, law and economics in early modern England. As part of the broader, European Research Council-funded interdisciplinary project, Crossroads of Knowledge in Early Modern England: the Place of Literature, our speakers will be attentive to the epistemic intersections between drama and economy, drama and law: how did legal, social and economic practices of the time condition Renaissance drama? how did the early modern theatre respond to, and, in turn, shape the legal and economic life of the period? Our speakers are Maria Fusaro (Exeter); Quentin Skinner (QMUL), Becky Tomlin (Birkbeck), and Andy Wood (Durham). Papers will be followed by responses and Q&A sessions. The colloquium ends with a concluding panel chaired by Craig Muldrew.

Convenors:

Rachel E. Holmes, Subha Mukherji, Tim Stuart-Buttle, Elizabeth L. Swann, Koji Yamamoto

Speakers:

Maria Fusaro (University of Exeter)
Quentin Skinner (Queen Mary, University of London)
Rebecca Tomlin (Birkbeck, University of London),
Andy Wood (University of Durham)

Panel Chair:

Craig Muldrew (University of Cambridge).

Panel Members:

Adrian Leonard (University of Cambridge), others TBC

More information, programme and abstracts here.

Wenceslas Hollar, The Long View of London (1642), via Wikimedia Commons

 

The English Legal Imaginary, 1500-1700

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Registration is open for Part II of this conference, to he held at the University of St Andrews, 1-2 May 2015. The English Legal Imaginary, Part II

Part I: Princeton University, 17-18 April, 2015

Part II: University of St Andrews, 1-2 May, 2015

Summary

The English Legal Imaginary, Part II is an interdisciplinary conference involving leading scholars working at the intersections of law, politics, literature and history in early modern England. The conference papers will contribute to the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of English Law and Literature, 1500-1700. Topics include: Roman law and common law, law and drama; law and education; equity, legal reform and literary censorship.

Speakers include: Martin Butler, Bradin Cormack, Alan Cromartie, Steve Hindle; Rab Houston, Lorna Hutson, David Ibbetson, James McBain, Subha Mukherji, Joad Raymond, Carolyn Sale, James Sharpe, Erica Sheen, Quentin Skinner, Virginia Lee Strain, Elliott Visconsi, Ian Williams, Jessica Winston, and Andrew Zurcher.