An interdisciplinary symposium hosted by the National Library of Wales, 6-7 July 2016, organised by Bryn Williams and Rachel Willie (Bangor University)
Confirmed keynote speakers:
Professor Sarah Prescott (Aberystwyth University)
Professor Philip Schwyzer (University of Exeter)
[Henry VIII] deliuered [the Welsh] wholy from all seruitude, and made them in all poynets equall to the Englishmen. Wherby it commeth to passe, that laying aside their old manners, they, who before were wonte to liue most sparingly: are now enritched and do imitate the Englishmen in diet, & apparell, howbeit, they be somedeale impatient of labour, and ouermuch boastying of the Nobilitie of their stocke, applying them selues rather to the seruice of noble men, then geuynge them selues to the learnyng of handycraftes.
Humphrey Llwyd, The Breviary of Britain trans. Thomas Twyne (1573)
In The Breviary of Britain, Humphrey Llwyd laments the acculturalisation processes that he perceives to have led to the anglicisation of the Welsh gentry. The Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542 formally annexed Wales to the Kingdom of England and thus changed the relationship between the English and the Welsh. Tudor kingship used the space of Wales to claim a right to the English throne and some Welsh gentry held prominent places at court, but what was Wales and how does the space of Wales connect to England? The ‘geographic turn’ in early modern studies has led to renewed interest in space and place and perennial concerns regarding national identity, memory and language have drawn attention to the landscape of Wales. This interdisciplinary symposium, organised in partnership between the National Library of Wales, the Society for Renaissance Studies and the School of English Literature, Bangor University, brings together scholars working in the fields of Welsh History, Literature, Philosophy, Art History and Musicology to interrogate what we understand by Wales in the early modern period.
Topics addressed may include (but are not limited) to:
- Space or place
- Wales and the cartographic imagination
- Topography
- Language and rhetoric
- Politics
- Identity
- Migration
- Exile
- Memory and remembering the past
- Welsh landscape
- Liminality
- Wales and visual culture
We welcome abstracts of no more than 250 words for twenty-minute papers, to be sent to emwales@bangor.ac.uk by 29 February 2016.
The symposium will be followed by the Society for Renaissance Studies’ Annual Welsh Lecture: Professor Andrew Hadfield (University of Sussex), 'William Thomas (d.1554): A Welsh Traitor in Italy'
