CALL FOR PAPERS: The Cultural Influence of Lucy Harington Russell, Countess of Bedford

“Life of the Muses’ day, their morning star!”
The Cultural Influence of Lucy Harington Russell, Countess of Bedford

11–12 August 2016, Lincoln College, Oxford

Paper proposals are invited for a conference dedicated to the cultural influence of Lucy Harington Russell (1580–1627), Countess of Bedford. Lady Bedford was the pre-eminent woman patron of early seventeenth-century England, and a key figure behind the artistic achievements of such luminaries as John Donne, John Dowland, Ben Jonson, Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel, and Aemilia Lanyer. She commissioned John Florio to make the first English translation of Montaigne’s Essais, and herself wrote poetry praised by Donne. Grand full-length portraits and exquisite miniatures testify to her patronage of artists including Nicholas Hilliard, and she worked with architects and landscape designers to produce pioneering estate designs. She participated in the most sumptuous court masques of the Jacobean era, managed her husband’s estates, intervened in politically sensitive marriages, and served as Queen Anna’s most trusted confidant. In an age when women’s voices were suppressed in politics and culture Lady Bedford exerted considerable influence in both arenas. Yet she is almost always discussed in relation to the men whom she enabled and inspired. This conference seeks to place her at the centre of critical enquiry, asking questions about power, politics, patronage, culture, literature, performance, art, architecture, religion, and the body.

Keynotes:
Professor Linda Levy Peck (George Washington University)
Professor Merry Wiesner-Hanks (University of Wisconsin–Madison)

Confirmed speakers include:
Julie Crawford (Columbia); Ariel Franklin-Hudson (Columbia); Karen Hearn (UCL); Erica Longfellow (New College, Oxford); Margaret Maurer (Colgate); Michelle O’Callaghan (Reading); Marion O’Connor (Kent); Barbara Ravelhofer (Durham); Chris Stamatakis (UCL); Jane Stevenson (Aberdeen); Sebastiaan Verweij (Bristol).

The conference organisers are Dr Daniel Starza Smith (Lincoln College, Oxford) and Dr Nadine Akkerman (Leiden/Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study). Please send expressions of interest to daniel.smith@ell.ox.ac.uk by Wednesday, 9 March. Graduate bursaries are available, thanks to generous support from the Society for Renaissance Studies, the Royal Historical Society, and the Royal Musical Association. Please indicate in your email if you would like to be considered for one of these.

'Inexcusabiles' - The Debate on Salvation and the Virtues of the Pagans in the Early Modern Period (1595 - 1772)

8 April 2016 Organisers: Alberto Frigo (University of Reims) and Guido Giglioni (Warburg Institute)

Speakers include: Michela Catto (FBK-ISR, Trento), Alberto Frigo (Reims), Guido Giglioni (Warburg Institute), Douglas Hedley (Cambridge), Franck Lessay (Paris), John Marenbon (Cambridge), Giuliano Mori, Michael Moriarty (Cambridge), François Trémolières (CELLF and Paris Ouest Nanterre) and Han van Ruler (Rotterdam)

In his pioneering Le Problème du salut des infidèles (1912, 1934), Louis Capéran devoted a number of pages to the theological debate on pagan salvation and the limbo at the time of Fénelon and Rousseau. More recently, Michael Moriarty has produced a comprehensive study on this topic (Oxford 2011), highlighting the role played by the French moralists. Yet the multiple forms that the Medieval and Renaissance debate on the pagans took during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries remain to be addressed in full. This one-day conference intends to fill this gap by looking at the history of early modern controversies on the salvation and virtues of the pagans. The posthumous edition of Montaigne’s Essais (1595) and Johann August Eberhard’s Neue Apologie des Socrates (1772) are the chronological limits that define the context that will be examined in this conference. Its aim is to reassess the question of the moral status of unbelievers in the early modern period by analysing how some specific theological issues were reshaped at the time. Above all, the conference will explore how the theme of the virtues and the salvation of the pagans intersected the early modern reception of ancient philosophy. The modern revival of Stoicism, Epicureanism and Scepticism is well known and has been studied extensively. Little attention, however, has been devoted to the relationship between the ethical models inspired by the heroes and philosophers of antiquity and the ‘new philosophy’.

Programme

10.00 Doors open and registration

10.15 Welcome

Session 1: The Humanistic Background

Guido Giglioni (Warburg Institute) - Between St Paul and Galen: How Juan Huarte de San Juan Responded to Inquisitorial Censorship

Alberto Frigo (University of Reims) - Montaigne’s Gods

11.30 Coffee

12.00 Session 2: The Theological Debate

Michael Moriarty (University of Cambridge) - ‘Would God Have Created the World in Order to Damn It?’; or is that a ‘Stupid Question’?

John Marenbon (University of Cambridge) - Pagan Salvation and Pagan Virtues – Collius and La Mothe Le Vayer

Han van Ruler (University of Rotteram) - The Scope of Grace: Early Modern Moral Philosophy and the Metaphysico-Moral Paradoxes of Divine Assistance

13.45 Lunch

14.45 Session 3: The Philosophers and the Unbelievers

Franck Lessay (University of Paris) - Hobbes’s Covenant, a Refuge for Heretics and Atheists?

Douglas Hedley (University of Cambridge) - Cudworth and Pagan Monotheism

François Tremolières (CELLF and Paris Ouest Nanterre) - Vertu des païens et salut des infidèles dans l’oeuvre de Fénelon

15.30 Coffee break

16.00 Session 4: The New Pagans

Giuliano Mori - Historia Gentilium (ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam): Jesuits, Missionaries, and the Seventeenth-Century Quest for a Universal History

Michela Catto (FBK-ISR, Trento) - Jesuits and Chinese Atheism: Back and Forth between Europe and China

17.30 Close and reception

Montaigne in Early Modern England and Scotland

Dates: Fri.-Sat. 6-7 Nov. 2015

Confirmed speakers:

Warren Boutcher (Queen Mary)
Will Hamlin (Washington State)
Katie Murphy (Oxford)
John O’Brien (Durham)
Richard Scholar (Oxford)
David Louis Sedley (Haverford)

The Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (IMEMS) at Durham University invites proposals for 20-minute papers on any aspect of the reception of Montaigne’s Essais in England and the larger Anglophone world, including Ireland, Scotland, and North America, during the first two hundred years following their initial publication in French. Any approach to the study of Montaigne’s influence is welcome, including literary criticism, philosophy, theology, psychology, history of science, and history of the book. Authors to consider range from Bacon and Hobbes up to Locke and Hume, and include literary figures, as well, such as Florio, Cornwallis, Daniel, Shakespeare, Jonson, Burton, Browne, Dryden, Johnson, Pope, Swift, and Sterne. Early career academics and postgraduates are encouraged to apply, as well as more established scholars. For consideration, please send a title, an abstract of no more than 200 words, and a one-page CV to montaigneinearlymodernengland@gmail.com no later than 1 August 2015.

http://www.dur.ac.uk/imems