This year Alison Dingle and I are suggesting some slight changes to the staff/postgraduate seminar. The first is organisational, in the sense that most of the papers given by external speakers will take place towards the end of the first semester and during the second. The second change is thematic. A great deal of literary research undertaken by staff and postgraduates in the department is historicist in nature, yet the principles upon which this kind of intellectual activity typically rests are no longer examined. So we are proposing that in the first semester the seminar should address the topic of the nature of literary history. At the first meeting I will talk generally about recent changes in literary history and distribute photocopies of material for discussion during the following two weeks.
Again in response to student requests, the subject of the second semester’s seminars will be genre: Danny Karlin’s paper will be a sort of sample.
Some themes in literary history (1): Introduction.
Some themes in literary history (2): Alistair Fowler, ‘The Two Histories’; Jerome McGann, ‘History, Herstory, Theirstory, Ourstory’.
Some themes in literary history (3): David Perkins, ‘Literary Classifications: How Have They Been Made?’
‘Patterns of Reading Some 17-Century Books’.
‘O Lyric Love: Women Poets as Singers’.
