Events

coming up:

past events:

Dangerous Art: Iconophilia and Iconoclasm. A panel of Durham scholars dedicated to iconoclasm, iconophilia, and theatre in seventeenth-century England and France spoke at the RSA conference in Berlin, 25-29 March 2015. James Shirley was included in the papers’ topics on 28 March.

Editing Seventeenth-Century Texts within the Theatrical Tradition. Paper by Barbara Ravelhofer, AHRC workshop “WISE – What is Scholarly Editing”, Durham University, 27 January 2015.

Music for Shirley’s works on the radio. Richard Mackenzie (lute) and Tamsin Lewis (alto, violin, drum) discussed Passamezzo’s CD of music for Shirley’s poetry and drama on Resonance fm (104.4fm). They also played extracts. 3 Feb 2014, 11.00-11.30am.

Shirley’s Poetry: Modernizing, Manuscripts, and Multiple Versions. Paper by Philip West, Hakluyt Project workshop “The Challenges and Opportunities of Editing”, Oxford, 16 January 2014.

Speech and Style in Early Modern Drama: Lessons from the James Shirley Project. Paper by Barbara Ravelhofer, workshop “Voices and Books, 1500-1800″, British Library, 11 Nov 2014. Follow this link for audio recordings taken during the workshop.

Dangerous Art and Iconoclasm in English Poetry and Drama under Charles I. Paper given by Barbara Ravelhofer, University of Newcastle, 4 December 2013

The symbolic killing of a person or idea by way of erasing a representation is a time-honoured practice. In early modern England, telling examples can be traced from the late reign of Elizabeth I to the Civil War. The paper discusses personalized iconoclasm in poems, paintings, and plays of the period, with particular attention to Rubens and James Shirley, chief playwright of Queen Henrietta’s Company.

Reanimating the Voices of James Shirley’s Drama. Paper given by Barbara Ravelhofer, Shakespeare Institute, Stratford, 10 May 2013

What can we learn about Shirley’s style when we consider the spoken word rather than silent reading? This paper discusses a range of approaches to Shirley, such as quantitative computer-based analysis, staged readings, and the delivery of Shirleian blank verse by an orator.

Shirley’s Style. Paper given by Barbara Ravelhofer, School of Advanced Studies, London, 13 December 2012

The canon of Shirley’s works includes 31 plays, 6 masques and entertainments (one of which is play-length), a printed collection of poems, and a range of further poems in collections of other authors as well as manuscript. Shirley also wrote an introduction to the 1647 Folio of Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays, as well as 5 grammars. This paper discusses some of the idiosyncrasies of Shirley’s writing.

Hesitation and Erasure: A Life in James Shirley’s Hand. Paper given by Eva Griffith, Durham University, 10 October 2012

Editing Now: James Shirley, Early Modern Performance, and Modern Textual Scholarship. AHRC-funded workshop, Durham University, 19-21 Sept 2012

with kind support of the Department of English and the Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (IMEMS), Durham

Participants: Andrew Ashbee (Musica Britannica), Robert Carver (Durham University), Robert Cummings (University of Glasgow), Marcus Dahl (School of Advanced Study, London), Eva Griffith (Durham University), John Lavagnino (King’s College, London), Sarah Parkin (Durham University), Sonia Ritter, Dan Starza-Smith (University of London), Jitka Stollova (Durham University), Stephen Tabor (Huntington Library, US), Marina Tarlinskaja (University of Washington, US), Brian Vickers (School of Advanced Study, London), Philip West (University of Oxford)

Topics: Editing Shirley Now; Shirley’s The Traitor and the Melbourne MS; Shirley’s Entertainments; Shirley’s The Triumph of Peace: A Bibliographer’s Nightmare Cracked; Caroline Theatre, Eikon Basilike, and the Public Image; Computational Analysis of Texts by Shirley, Chapman, Cavendish, and Beaumont/Fletcher; Shirley’s Versification Compared to His Predecessors; Style from a Performance Perspective; Spoken Drama; A Play out of Joint: The Politician; Shirley’s Victorian Critics; Experiences on the Ford Project

The Word “Complement” in the Works of James Shirley. Paper given by Eva Griffith at the Seventeenth Century Studies conference, Durham, 21 July 2010

“The Glories of our blood and state”: James Shirley’s Funeral Song and Its Notable Public Appeal. Paper given by Eva Griffith at the conference Visual and Literary Representations of the English Regicide in Early Modern Europe, Paris, 11 June 2010

AHRC-funded James Shirley Workshop, St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, 21-23 September, 2009

Participants: Andrew Ashbee (Musica Britannica), David Bevington (University of Chicago, US), Robert Carver (Durham University), Emily Collins (University of Warwick), Marcus Dahl (School of Advanced Studies, London), Eugene Giddens (Anglia Ruskin University), Teresa Grant (University of Warwick), Eva Griffith (Durham University), Andrew Hadfield (University of Sussex), Chiaki Hanabusa (Keio University, Japan), Robert Lublin (University of Massachusetts, Boston, US), Scott Maisano (University of Massachusetts, Boston, US), Lucy Munro (Keele University), Helen Ostovich (McMaster University, Canada), Tony Parr (University of the Western Cape, South Africa), Barbara Ravelhofer (Durham University), Julie Sanders (University of Nottingham), Alison Searle (Anglia Ruskin University), Laura Stalker (Huntington Library, US), Brian Vickers (School of Advanced Studies, London), Philip West (University of Oxford)