CALL FOR PAPERS

DANTE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

6-8 September, 2012

Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London

Dante meets Beatrice by the Ponte Santa Trinita: Henry Holiday 1883

PRINCIPAL SPEAKERS :

Hilary Fraser (Geoffrey Tillotson Professor of Nineteenth-Century Studies at Birkbeck College, London, UK)
Fabio Camilletti (Asst. Professor of Italian, University of Warwick, UK)
Alison Milbank (Associate Professor, Theology & Religious Studies, Nottingham University, UK)
Matthew Reynolds (The Times Lecturer in English, St Anne's Oxford, UK)
Horia Patapievici (Director of the Romanian Cultural Institute, Bucharest, Romania)
Ralph Pite (Professor of English, and Director of the Centre for Romantic Studies, Bristol University, UK)
Stephen Prickett (Regius Professor Emeritus of English, Glasgow University, and Honorary Professor, University of Kent at Canterbury)

As a number of historians have pointed out, the concept of the 'Renaissance' as a way of describing Italy from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries is essentially a nineteenth century idea. We look at medieval and early modern Italy through nineteenth-century spectacles. Indeed, the anglophone cult of Dante – in commentaries, translations, illustrations, and a host of literary references – belongs to this nineteenth century matrix.

This conference aims to bring together literary critics (both English and Italian), historians, and art historians, with scholars from similar disciplines specializing in the nineteenth century. To give focus to what might otherwise be an unwieldy spread, we intend to centre our theme on Florence – for many Victorians the epitome of Italian culture and tradition – both through the eyes of the historians and critics who interpreted it, and also through the eyes of the Anglo-American community that lived there (most notably the Brownings and their circle) and did so much to spread the cult of Dante. Reviewing a Florentine exhibition of Anglo-Italian art, Simon Poe wrote in Apollo in 2004 that "there is still a very exciting book still to be written about the British and American visitors to Florence during the nineteenth century and the cultural interaction that took place there." Douglass and Burwick, in the introduction to their recent excellent Dante and Italy in British Romanticism (Sept 2011), point out that there was also an Italian community in London:… "Mazzini and Foscolo are (..) representative of a large and noticeable Italian presence in the London of the Romantics". In fact, Mazzini arrived in London to re-form his Giovine Italia party in 1837, arguably post-Romantic; although Foscolo did work in London from 1816 to his death in 1827. As is evident from the work of so many of this group, from the paintings of Marie Spartali Stillman to Walter Savage Landor's Imaginary Conversations, the figure of Dante was central to the apprehension both of Florence and also the concept of the modern.

Any such focus on Anglo-Florentines, however, does not mean that we would not welcome papers on Blake, Pre-Raphaelites, or even later novelists, such as Mrs Humphry Ward. Dante's Florence was also the model for cities such as Manchester, and we welcome contributions from urban historians and students of architecture. This allows interrogation of Dante's political theory and social ethics as well as his anthropology and aesthetics. These topics are often missed and yet were crucially important to Victorian readers of Dante. Although Henry Holiday's "The Meeting of Dante and Beatrice at the Ponte Santa Trinita" illustrates the conference brochure, Leighton's great canvas (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum) of Cimabue's Madonna processing through the streets of Florence is equally germane, since it shows Dante watching a cavalcade of civic life, from the artistic to the political: an Italian equivalent of Chaucer's pilgrims.

The reason we are placing this conference in London rather than Florence itself is that (as the above paragraphs indicate) we wish to centre it on the nineteenth century re-discovery of Dante, and consequently of Florence, in the English speaking world.

The conference is organised by Professor Adina Ciugureanu (Ovidius University Constanta, Romania) and Patricia Erskine-Hill (Lecturer in Italian and Italian Renaissance Literature, ret'd). Please send proposals to adina.ciugureanu@seanet.ro and to email@patsyerskine-hill.co.uk by May 1, 2012.

The School of Advanced Study is part of the central University of London. The School takes its responsibility to visitors with special needs very seriously and will endeavour to make reasonable adjustments to its facilities in order to accommodate the needs of such visitors. If you have a particular requirement, please feel free to discuss it confidentially with the organiser in advance of the event taking place.

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.