CALL FOR PAPERS:
CATHOLIC QUEENS IN THE EARLY MODERN BRITISH IMAGINATION, 1500-1800
Annual Meeting of the Northeast Modern Language Association
Central Connecticut State University
Hartford, CT
March 30-31, 2001
As England and (later) Britain forged a sense of a common
identity, writers looked to Catholic queens as images of what the new
Protestant nation had rejected. Depending upon a writer's political
position, these alien others--including Catherine of Aragon, Mary Tudor,
Mary Queen of Scots, Catherine de Medici, and Henrietta Maria--became
either nightmarish foreign fiends or wistful nostalgic heroines. This
panel will explore the political and cultural significance of these women
and consider the question of how configurations of gender and religious
identity shaped the terms of early modern political debate.
Recent historicist work in the early modern period has added
greatly to our understanding of two aspects of cultural identity, gender
and nation. Religious viewpoints, too, have been rediscovered as crucial
components of individual and social worldviews. Focusing on images of
Catholic queens, this panel will pull together these various discussions
and apply their findings to the realm of politics, both on the local and
national level. How do portrayals of Catholic femininity serve to bolster
or undermine Protestant conceptions of the family and the nation? How
does the demonization or the idealization of a Catholic queen serve a
national political agenda? How does the image of the Catholic queen give
voice to a political and religious minority, or how does it exile such
voices to the margins of society?
This panel will define "early modern Britain" broadly as the
period from Henry VIII's divorce in 1533 through the defeat of the
Jacobite Rebellion in 1745, and it will welcome work from all genres
(including drama, epic, romance, lyric, satire, prose narrative, and
political and polemical prose). Papers will chart a movement from the
women of Spenser, Shakespeare and the Elizabethan stage, through Jonson
and then Dryden, and on to Defoe and Fielding. This broad chronological
sweep will suspend the arbitrary divide between the Renaissance and the
Long Eighteenth Century and promote discussion about the long-term
development of what Linda Colley calls the patriotic Britons (_Britons:
Forging the Nation 1707-1837_ [New Haven: Yale UP, 1992]).
Abstracts (500 words) or complete papers (15-20 minutes) accepted through
September 22. Accepted panelists will need to be members of NEMLA by
November 1.
Send electronic submissions to:
<john.staines@yale.edu>
or paper submissions to:
John Staines
17 Cottage St. #3
New Haven, CT 06511
===============================================
From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
CFP@english.upenn.edu
Full Information at
http://www.english.upenn.edu/CFP/
or write Erika Lin: elin@english.upenn.edu
===============================================
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Sep 07 2000 - 14:19:35 EDT