'Shakespeare and Italy' Seminars at the Victoria and Albert Museum

11 October to 22 November from 14:00-16.30.
The Lydia & Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre, Victoria and Albert Museum.

An inter-disciplinary course that brings together leading scholars from English Literature, Italian Studies, Translation Studies and Comparative Literature, to offer an in-depth view of the fascinating dynamics between Shakespeare and Italian literary culture from the Elizabethan era to the present day.

Arranged chronologically, the sessions address the wide range of plays which Shakespeare situates in Italy, including Much Ado about Nothing, The Winter’s Tale, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice and Othello. Besides providing close textual analyses of the individual plays, the course considers how Italian authors, actors, and composers repurposed a selection of Shakespearean characters for contemporary audiences, including the troupes of the Commedia dell’arte, Giuseppe Verdi, the first Sicilian dialect theatre company, and the recent ‘Shylock Project’. 

The course thus combines the study of a variety of disciplines with more practical-based sessions — including a Commedia dell’arte mask workshop — to explain and explore the vibrant and shifting currents of transnational exchange between Shakespeare and Italy.

For bookings, please see here.

Shakespeare and Italy: From the Early Modern Period to Today.  Tuesdays 14:00-16:30

11 October – Dr Chris Stamatakis
Shakespeare’s Italy: An Introduction
Much Ado about Nothing

18 October – Olly Crick
Shakespeare and the Commedia dell’arte

1 November – Dr Eric Langley
Shakespeare and Venice
The Merchant of Venice

8 November – Professor Helen Hackett
Shakespeare and Amore
Romeo and Juliet

15 November – Professor Rene Weis
Shakespeare and Italian Opera
Verdi’s Macbeth and Othello

22 November – Professor Loredana Polezzi and Dr Enza De Francisci
Translating Shakespeare in Modern Italy

CALL FOR PAPERS: EMLS - Rome and Home: The Cultural Uses of Rome in Early Modern English Literature

Early Modern Literary Studies, 2 May 2014

Ancient Rome had a pervasive hold over the early modern imagination and its influence can be discerned in a variety of sources, discourses, and practices during the period. Episodes from Roman history provided the inspiration for numerous plays and narrative poems, as well as offering an effective means of interrogating such political and philosophical positions as republicanism, absolutism and stoicism. Roman history also provided a host of good and bad exemplary figures, as well as highlighting the dangers of civil war and political factionalism. Roman authors like Seneca, Juvenal, Horace, and Terence also had a considerable influence on the development of various literary genres during the period and many historical and political works were influenced by both the style and content of such commentators as Cicero and Tacitus. The influence of ancient Rome also had a bearing upon English national identity. The myth of the translatio imperii, as promulgated in the histories of Geoffrey of Monmouth, was often appropriated in propaganda as a means of legitimising England’s imperial ambitions. James I also set out to refashion himself as an Augustan ruler whose iconography owed much to the resonance of imperial Rome.

This special issue of Early Modern Literary Studies (EMLS) will explore the influence of ancient Rome upon the literature and culture of early modern England and the related issues it provoked. We therefore welcome proposals for articles that consider any aspect of this subject; topics for discussion may include (but are not restricted to):

• Roman history as a narrative source in early modern drama, satire, and narrative poetry.
• Translation, rhetoric, and the influence of Latin.
• The influence of republicanism and stoicism and the bearings of Roman political ideas upon debates relating to sovereignty, citizenship, and absolutism.
• The relationship between ancient Rome and English (or British) national identity.
• The use of imagery associated with the Roman Empire in royal propaganda and iconography.
• The influence of Roman sources in debates relating to political factionalism and civil war.
• The resonance of Roman culture compared with the influence of ancient Greece.
• The links between Rome and Catholicism.

Please send abstracts (250-300 words) to Professor Lisa Hopkins (l.m.hopkins@shu.ac.uk), Dr Daniel Cadman (d.cadman@shu.ac.uk), or Dr Andrew Duxfield (a.duxfield@shu.ac.uk) by Friday 2 May 2014.

Italy Made in England: Contemporary British Perspectives on Italian Culture

Provisional Programme 
Booking Form
Booking Form pdf

Directions and Maps / B&B on campus / B&B off campus

Special Discount - Members of Warwick Italian Society - registration fee only £7.50 Booking Form / Booking Form pdf

‘The Italy perceived by the British travellers is – at the least – “half-created” by them. Or, to put it in less romantic and more fashionable terms: it is a construction, an “Italy made in England”’

M. Pfister, The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Italies of British Travellers

Our proposal is to bring together scholars and specialists from a wide range of disciplines to answer the following critical questions: why are some aspects of Italian culture overlooked, given that an Anglophone, and indeed global, audience engages keenly with several others? What are the reasons for this selection? How is Italy perceived within global culture, and indeed, how many and what kinds of Italies circulate today? This will span from the Renaissance image of Italy as a pinnacle of culture to the modern-day ‘sick man of Europe’. By including experts from History, Philosophy, Film Studies and Art History, as well as Italianists, we hope to broaden our understanding of the subject we study as well as probe wider questions about the nature of audience reception and the (mis)fortunes of culture beyond national boundaries in today’s world.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

Bill Emmott - former editor of the Economist, author ofGood Italy, Bad Italy
and co-creator of the documentaryGirlfriend in a Coma with Annalisa Piras.

Donald Sassoon - Department of History, Queen Mary, University of London

Organisers: Giacomo Comiati / Martina Piperno / Kate Willman