Doing English: Week 3 - Authorship

Weds 29th October, LT2, 11am

11.00 - Ms. Robinson, 'Translation, Adaptation, and the Medieval Author'

My lecture will be looking at ways of approaching 'The Medieval Author': what is a Medieval Author and what kinds of things do we mean when we talk about Medieval Authorship? To do this I'll be examining the ways in which Chaucer and Lydgate are figured within the Riverside Chaucer, and bringing in (a small amount of!) theory to look at how we could complicate questions of authorship, and analyse the ways in which we approach Medieval texts.

The lecture will be especially useful for Mods 1 and 3b (Middle English) and FHS Course I paper 3, and Course II.

11.30 - Mr. Salamone, 'Reconstructing the Early Modern Author?'

This lecture will examine concepts of authorship at work in some of the poetry, prose, and drama of the early modern period. Can we say that the notion of the ‘Author’, as we think of it today, existed in the 16th and early 17th century? Are we simplifying the early modern literary system if we forget to acknowledge that there are multiple modes of authorship at play in this period? What does it mean to re-member and memorialise writers long dead? These questions will be explored through a discussion of three main areas: the manuscript circulation of verse, the use of celebrity and authorial personae as marketing tools in Elizabethan prose, and the construction of theatrical authorship.

This lecture will cover material relevant to Mods paper 1, and FHS papers 2 and 4.

Mr Farrell's lecture has been cancelled.