CFP: Shakespeare and Oral Culture (UK) (3/1/05; BSA, 9/1/05-9/4/05)

Shakespeare and Oral Culture

British Shakespeare Association, 1-4 September 2005

In recent years early modern print culture has been extensively
studied, and much has also been done to recover the conditions of
manuscript circulation, but relatively little attention has been paid
to the most fundamental medium of communication, that of speech. This
is perhaps surprising, because while late sixteenth-century England
could no longer be described as an oral society, it was certainly not
a fully literate one (Thomas 1986, Fox 2000). Many aspects of
Elizabethan culture demonstrate a residual orality: its stock of
commonplaces, for example, which were 'the equivalent of the epic
singer's stock of formulas and themes' (Ong 1965). While these were
embedded in education, other oral elements, such as proverbs,
ballads, and the stories of oral tradition, are more obviously from
the province of popular culture. The purpose of this seminar is to
identify those aspects of Shakespeare's work that we might describe
as being part of oral culture, but also to ask questions about their
relationship both to the conditions of the theatre and to the
conditions of literate culture.

For a fuller outline see http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/english/rhodes/bsa.html

Proposals for papers to Neil Rhodes <nppr_at_st-andrews.ac.uk> by 1
March 2005 please.

-- 
Professor Neil Rhodes
School of English
University of St Andrews
St Andrews
Fife KY16 9AL
Scotland, UK
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