Ben Jonson’s Workes and their contexts: 400 years on


12 November 2016, 10am-4.30pm
Humanities Research Institute, University of Sheffield

This day conference, hosted by the Sheffield Centre for Early Modern Studies, celebrates the 400th anniversary of Ben Jonson’s folio Workes. Its publication was a landmark in English literary history, grouping together Jonson’s work in multiple genres, implicitly aligning him with the classic authors of the past, and embodying his writing in a monumental, thousand-page object.

The conference brings together specialists from a range of disciplines both to explore the text of the Workes and to consider Jonson in relation to the wider social and cultural forms of his day. These include music, the visual arts, clothing, and drinking, as well as the multimedia performance that was his 1618 walk to Scotland.

Speakers:
  • Martin Butler (Leeds)
  • John Cunningham (Bangor)
  • Anna Groundwater (Edinburgh), James Loxley (Edinburgh) and Julie Sanders (Newcastle), representing ‘Ben Jonson’s Walk to Scotland’
  • Tamsin Lewis (Passamezzo)
  • Eleanor Lowe (Oxford Brookes)
  • Jane Rickard (Leeds)
  • Matthew Steggle (Sheffield Hallam)
  • Crosby Stevens (Sheffield)
  • Phil Withington (Sheffield), representing ‘Intoxicants and Early Modernity’

Registration opens soon; for more details, see here.

Dr Tom Rutter 
Lecturer in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama Co-convenor, 
MA English Studies Online School of English University of Sheffield 
Jessop West 1 
Upper Hanover Street 
Sheffield 
S3 7RA