Swinburne Centenary Conference

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	Swinburne: A Centenary Conference 10 & 11 July 2009 Senate House, University of London Sponsored by the Modern Humanities Research Association (the George H. Genzer Bequest), Queen Mary, University of London, Oxford University and Portsmouth University.
from a photo. by Messrs. Elliot & Fry c. 1869

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), poet, dramatist, novelist and critic, was late Victorian England's unofficial Poet Laureate, admired by his contemporaries for his technical brilliance, his facility with classical and medieval forms, and his courage in expressing his sensual, erotic imagination. Immensely important in his own day, Swinburne was critically neglected for a large part of the twentieth century, but his reputation has continued to rise steadily since the 1960s. There has been, however, no conference on his life and work since 1985. This international centenary conference aims to reclaim Swinburne's position as the pre-eminent late nineteenth-century poet, to draw attention to the breadth and diversity of his oeuvre, to re-evaluate his considerable achievements, and to assess his impact on those who came after. It will benefit from current critical work on aestheticism, the arts, gender and sexuality in the Victorian period, as well as recent scholarship that exposes the indebtedness of the modernists to their derided Victorian predecessors. In addition to the three distinguished plenary speakers – Jerome McGann, Terry Meyers, and Yopie Prins – the conference aims to attract both those with specialist interests in Swinburne and those keen to extend their knowledge of one of the most exciting literary figures of the Victorian age. It also aims to stimulate further academic scholarship on Swinburne, with the specific intention of producing an edited collection of the best papers resulting from the conference. The conference is also timed to allow delegates to attend the joint BAVS/NAVSA conference 13-15 July 2009, Churchill College, Cambridge.

Registration Fees:
£65 Standard / £45 Speakers, IES Members or concessions (postgrads, unwaged)

Optional Extra (please use the registration form to sign up):

10 July (evening): dinner at Rasa Samudra, Charlotte Street: £35 per person (a selection of vegetarian and seafood dishes, glass of wine and service): NB: no dinner bookings will be taken after 26 June.

CLICK HERE FOR REGISTRATION FORM IN word.doc FORMAT

CLICK HERE FOR REGISTRATION FORM IN pdf FORMAT

PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME
Friday 10 July 2009
9.00am	Registration: 3rd Floor Foyer, Senate House North Block, Malet Street, London WC1E

10.00am	PLENARY 1:	Room N336
	Jerome McGann (University of Virginia), 'Wagner, Baudelaire, Swinburne. Poetry in the Condition of Music'

11.00am	Coffee

11.30am	PARALLEL SESSIONS 1:
	Session 1a: Early Works Chair: Laurel Brake (Birkbeck College, UL)	Room N336
	Linda Peterson (Yale University), 'Swinburne's Poetic Debut: Atalanta in Calydon as Iconic Book' Nicholas Shrimpton (Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford), 'The Making of an Aesthete: Swinburne's Rosamond' Rosemary Tate (Worcester College, Oxford), ' "If life taste sweet": Swinburne's Poems and Ballads and the Culture of Sweetness'
	Session 1b: Lyric and Music Chair: Jerome McGann (University of Virginia)	Room NG14
	Elizabeth Helsinger (University of Chicago), 'Song's Fictions' Stoddard Martin (Institute of English Studies),'The Death of Wagner: Swinburne and D'Annunzio'
	Session 1c: Images and Contexts Chair: Colin Cruise	Room NG15
	Rikky Rooksby (Oxford), 'Swinburne: The Visual Record' Jan Marsh (National Portrait Gallery) ' "As much a poem as a painting": Aesthetic Exchanges in the long 1860s'

1.00pm	Lunch (provided for the day's speakers)	Room NG16

2.30pm	PARALLEL SESSIONS 2:
	Session 2a: Poetics Chair: Elizabeth Helsinger (University of Chicago)	Room N336
	Alan Young-Bryant (Cornell University), 'Luscious Verbosity, Rank Rhyme' Laura Kilbride (Queens' College, Cambridge), 'Poeta Loquitur: Sound and Sense in Swinburne's Prosody' Stephanie Kuduk-Weiner (Wesleyan University), 'Knowledge and Sense Experience in Swinburne's Late Poetry'
	Session 2b: Vagueness and Suggestion Chair: Herbert Tucker (University of Virginia)	Room NG14
	Catherine Maxwell (Queen Mary), 'T. S. Eliot's Response to Swinburne' Fiona Tomkinson (Yeditepe University, Istanbul), 'Vagueness in Swinburne'
	Session 2c: Gender and Sexuality Chair: Richard Dellamora (Trent University, Canada)	Room NG15
	Ellis Hanson (Cornell University), 'Suffering in Style: Swinburne on Sade and Baudelaire' Sarah Parker (Birmingham University), 'Whose Muse?: Sappho, Swinburne and the Lesbian Poet' Anthea Ingham (University of Birmingham), ' "The swallows of dreams through its dim fields dart": The Dream Mythology of East Dene'

4.00pm	Coffee	3rd floor foyer

4.30pm	PARALLEL SESSIONS 3:
	Session 3a: Politics Chair: Nicholas Shrimpton (Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford)	Room N336
	Fabian MacPherson (University College London), 'Swinburne versus Napoleon III' Vicky Greenaway (Royal Holloway, UL), 'Art and Part?: Unification, Aesthetics and Politics in Songs before Sunrise' Nora Liassis (European University Cyprus), ' "Let there be light": Swinburne's Act of Faith'
	Session 3b: Spiritual Thought Chair: Rikky Rooksby (Oxford University)	Room NG14
	Yisrael Levin (University of Victoria, Canada), ' "Off Shore" and Swinburne's Myth of Creation' Michael Wilson (University of Brighton), ' "Man is the master of things": Swinburne's "Pananthropism" and the Anthropological Society of London Natalie Tal Harries (University of Amsterdam), 'The Deep Truth: Algernon Charles Swinburne and the Shelleyan Quest for Meaning'
	Session 3c: Criticism/Aestheticism Chair: Hilary Fraser (Birkbeck College, UL)	Room NG15
	Laurel Brake (Birkbeck College, UL), 'Swinburne, Pater and Journalism' Stefano Evangelista (Trinity College, Oxford), 'The Language of Art Criticism: Swinburne, Pater and Ekphrasis' Jonathan Bate (University of Warwick), 'Swinburne on Shakespeare and Co.'

6.00pm	Drinks Reception	3rd floor foyer

	Optional dinner at Rasa Samudra, Charlotte Street: £35 per head (please use the registration form to sign up)


Saturday 11 July 2009
9.30am	PLENARY 2:	Room N336
	Terry Meyers (College of William and Mary), 'Swinburne's Editors, Editions, and Biographers'

10.30am	Coffee

11.00am	PARALLEL SESSIONS 4:
	Session 4a: Impact and Influence Chair: Yisrael Levin (University of Victoria)	Room N336
	Nick Freeman (Loughborough University), ' "Broken Blossoms, Ruined Rhymes": Dowson and Swinburne in the 1890s' Dinah Roe (Independent Scholar),' "Good Satan!": The Unlikely Poetic Affinity of Swinburne and Christina Rossetti' Ana Vadillo (Birkbeck College, UL), 'Swinburne, Michael Field and the Late-Victorian Closet Drama'
	Session 4b: Hellenisms Chair: Yopie Prins (UMich, Ann Arbor)	Room NG14
	Charlotte Ribeyrol (Paris XII University), 'Swinburne: A Nineteenth-Century Hellene?' Richard Dellamora (Trent University, Canada), 'Swinburne, Modern Desire, and the Hellenistic Revival' Lena Arampatzidou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), 'Swinburne's Reception Abroad: The Modern Greek Paradigm'
	Session 4c: MSS and Resources Chair: Terry Meyers (College of William and Mary)	Room NG15
	Wim Van Mierlo, (Institute of English Studies), 'The " ~~sad pitiless sorrowful inexorable~~ imperishable faces": Swinburne and Revision' Tim Burnett (formerly British Museum), 'A Swinburne Edition' John Walsh (Indiana University), 'Online Swinburne Project'

12.30pm	Lunch (provided for the day's speakers)	Room NG16

2.00pm	PLENARY 3:	Room N336
	Yopie Prins (UMich, Ann Arbor) 'On "The Flogging Block"'

3.00pm	PARALLEL SESSIONS 5:
	Session 5a: Form and Lyric Chair: Linda Hughes (Texas Christian University)	Room N336
	Herbert Tucker (University of Virginia), 'What Goes Around: A Century of Roundels' Marion Thain (University of Birmingham), 'Desire Lines: Swinburne and Lyric Crisis, 1866-1883'
	Session 5b: A Year's Letters Chair: Tim Burnett (formerly, British Museum)	Room NG14
	Lakshmi Krishnan (New College, Oxford), 'Swinburne's A Year's Letters and French Epistolary Fiction' Patricia Pulham (University of Portsmouth), 'Swinburne's A Year's Letters, Masquerade and the English Epistolary Novel'
	Session 5c: Swimming Chair: Ana Vadillo (Birkbeck College, UL)	Room NG15
	Morito Uemura (University of Shiga Prefecture), 'Swinburne, the Swimmer' Julia F. Saville (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), 'Swinburne's Swimmers: Shifting Politics of a Cosmopolitan Republican Trope'

4.00pm	Closing discussion	Room N336

5.00pm	End

Organizers: Stefano Evangelista (Trinity, Oxford), Catherine Maxwell (Queen Mary, London), and Patricia Pulham (Portsmouth).

Enquiries: Jon Millington, Events Officer, Institute of English Studies, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU; tel +44 (0) 207 664 4859; Email jon.millington@sas.ac.uk

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This page was last updated on: 08-Jul-2009