Conference Review
Classicisms in the English Renaissance
Summary Abstract
The conference was planned in association with the writing and editing of a volume on 'The English Renaissance', part of a 5-volume 'Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature' (OUP). This is a major publishing project, designed as a large-scale survey and exploration of the transmission of classical Greek and Latin texts in English literary culture. The Renaissance volume has a relatively long lead time (deadline of 2011).
Conference Review
The purpose of the conference was to gather together, at an early stage in the gestation of the volume, as many of the contributors as possible, a mixture of English-literature and classical scholars, some senior, some up-and-coming, from both sides of the Atlantic, with a view to exploring and comparing approaches and methods to a literary history of this kind, in the light of recent developments in the study of intertextuality and allusion, and of the material and cultural contexts for literary production. The conference was also open to other scholars and students. The topics covered in the several panels included models of imitation, patterns of reading and translation, concepts of classicism, institutional contexts, genre, philosophy and literature. A closing round-table session usefully raised consciousness in a number of areas. A follow-up conference is planned at Penn State University in 2009.
