Michael Drayton's ‘Poly-Olbion' and the Writing of Britain

‘Poly-Olbion and the Writing of Britain’, at The Royal Geographical Society

Programme

Thursday 10th September

10.00-10.30 Registration, Main Hall

10.30-11.00 Session 1: Introduction
Andrew McRae (Exeter), ‘The Poly-Olbion Project’

11.00-12.45 Session 2: Forms of Nationhood
Sara Trevisan (Brunel), ‘National Ancestry and Cultural Geography in Poly-Olbion’
James Loxley (Edinburgh), ‘Jonson, Drayton and the Mythography of a Binational Britain’
Sukanya Dasgupta (Calcutta), ‘Imagining Britain: Reconstructing history and writing national identity in Englands Heroicall Epistles and Poly-Olbion’

12.45-1.30 Lunch

1.30-3.20 Session 3: Waters
Sandra Logan (Michigan State), ‘Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion: Maritime England and the Free Seas Debate’
Shannon Garner-Balandrin (Northeastern), ‘Curls to Curled Waves: the Poly-Olbion and Michael Drayton’s Female Rivers’
Bernhard Klein (Kent), ‘Poly-Olbion and “those Rough Gods of the Sea”’

3.20-3.45 Tea

3.45-5.30 Session 4: Localism & Regionalism
Liz Oakley-Brown (Lancaster), ‘Of merry Robin Hood, and of his merrier men’: Anti-Curial Chorography and Michael Drayton’s ‘Robin Hood’s Story’
Todd Andrew Borlik (Huddersfield), ‘Poly-Olbion, Bio-Regionalism, and the Beating of the Bounds’
Steph Mastoris (National Waterfront Museum), ‘Choices in chorography: Inclusion and omission in Drayton’s account of Nottinghamshire’

6.00 Exhibition opening & preview

FRIDAY 11 SEPTEMBER

9.10-10.40 Session 5: Contexts
Daniel Cattell, ‘Michael Drayton and Britain’s Religious Past’
Robert Smith, ‘Poly-Olbion and the Writing of Britain in John Trussell’s Touchstone of Tradition’
Esther M. J. van Raamsdonk, ‘British Consciousness and the Travelogue’

10.50-11.10 Coffee

11.10-12.30 Session 6: Cartographies
Rab MacGibbon (National Portrait Gallery), ‘William Hole: Drayton’s engraver in the context of Prince Henry’s court’
William Porter (Harvard), ‘“By his spatious Maps”: The Cartographic Poly-Olbion’

12.30-1.15 Lunch

1.15-2.30 Session 4: John Selden’s Poly-Olbion
Sjoerd Levelt (Bilkent), ‘John Selden’s Medieval Chronicles’
Philip Schwyzer (Exeter), ‘Drayton and Selden in Dialogue’

2.30-2.50 Tea

2.50-4.10 Session 7: Poetics
Angus Vine (Stirling), ‘Drayton’s copious chorography: catalogues, lists and names in Poly-Olbion’
Andrew Hadfield (Sussex), ‘The Problems of Reading The Landscape’

4.10 Closing remarks

Venue: The Royal Geographical Society
1 Kensington Gore,
London,
SW7 2AR
For all booking enquiries please contact: Mandy Bedford

University of Exeter
College of Humanities
Research Office
Queen's Building
The Queen's Drive
Exeter
EX4 4QH
Tel: +44 (0)1392 726145
Email: hums-conferences@ex.ac.uk