Thursday, February 25, 2010

Call for Papers
"Reading Anthologies in Renaissance Europe" 
(1450-1650), Trinity College Dublin, July 19th-21st 2010
As print culture developed through the Renaissance, authors, printers and editors quickly came to exploit the commerical and literary potential of compendia and anthologies.  These works took many different forms: ‘recueils’, ‘œuvres’, ‘poésies choisies’, song books, joke collections. In both printed or manuscript form, anthologies circulated in sixteenth-century Europe in Latin and the vernacular. 
This conference will explore the factors that governed the production, circulation and reception of anthologies in the Europe of the Long Renaissance.  What editorial and commercial imperatives drove their appearance? What cultural practices arose from their publication? How are the cultural practices of the anthology related to or different from those of collected and multi-part works? How did readers react to the concept of multi-authored works?
The organisers welcome panals of up to three participants and individual papers which are related to the following broad thematic areas:
·       The Semantics of the Anthology
o   What is an anthology?
o   Re-presenting works to the reader
o   Material reconstruction of previously-circulated works
o   The role of illustration in anthologies
o   Literal and Metaphorical collections
·       Commercial imperatives
o   The emergance of collected works
o   The notion of branding
o   Case studies of failed brands
o   The re-ordering of texts for commercial purposes
o   Print vs Mansuscript
o   The place of Anthology in print culture

·       Anthological Methods & Editorial Practices
o   How was matierial collected?
o   Selection vs compliation
o   Case studies of items left out or excluded
o   The role of the printer/publisher/author/editor/translator
o   Editorial changes
o   The role of translation
o   Bibliographical approaches and methodologies

·       The Reader
o   Strategies to modify appeal to the reader
o   Moralisation as a means of attracting a new readership
o   Spatial metaphors of reading and the reader’s ‘journey’
o   New reading experiences

·       Anthologies and Longevity
o   How does the form of the anthology either promote or hinder the longevity of the text? 
o   Poetry
o   Literature
o   Moral philosophy
o   Science
o   Law
o   Historical writing
Proposals of up to 300 words for a 20-minute paper (proportionately longer for panels) should be sent to conference organisers Sara Barker (s.k.barker@warwick.ac.uk) and Pollie Bromilow (pollie.bromilow@liverpool.ac.uk) by March 31st 2010.

posted by Kevin Curran at 1:55 PM