Guest Post: Daniel Cook (Queens’ College, University of Cambridge)
British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (BSECS)
University of Winchester and Chawton House Library
Considering that the biennial British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Post-Graduate Students and Early Career Scholars conference (27th and 28th June) was a conference about “identities”, let’s begin with some outward appearances. Around 65% of the delegates were from overseas, as far afield as Australia, the States, and Japan, and including many from across Europe. The age-mix was also surprisingly diverse, as beginning graduates joyfully exchanged ideas and stories with the more senior members of the eighteenth-century studies community, including members of the BSECS executive board (http://www.bsecs.org.uk/comm.stm). Such a community, as headed by BSECS, is composed of a number of different disciplines – even ones without official names – such as History, English, French, and Austenian Cryptography. I’m pleased to report that such a heady mix was well-represented at the Winchester conference, in no small part due to the eclectic variety of rooms for the panels. Within the University of Winchester itself delegates were able to listen to papers in the cosy chapel room of the West Downs Centre or take in talks in the more traditional seminar rooms. And, no less importantly, lunch was served in the large Shakespeare Room. On Friday afternoon we took a trip to the second of the venues, the iconic Chawton House Library. So, perhaps inevitably, the range of papers was wonderfully diverse. Old favourites were well represented – especially Defoe and Austen – along with a host of unknown names. Needless to say it’s gratifying to find such passionate and illuminating approaches to a period that all eighteenth-century scholars would recognise as both familiar and unfamiliar in equal measure.
FRIDAY
Debbie Welham (Winchester), the conference organiser and BSECS postgraduates and early career scholars representative, opened the conference with a very warm welcome address at the very reasonable time of 10am. Proceeding immediately to the first panels of the day, I chose Panel 1: Forging Literary Identity. The speakers were Claudine van Hensbergen and John McTague (both Oxford), and McTague again, reading the prize-winning paper of the regrettably absent Stephen Bernard (Oxford). All three papers were extremely witty and vibrant, and exhibited some fascinating insights into their respective material. Where do debates go when they die? Once we realise an attribution is wrong, do we lose interest in it? Such questions were explored in great theoretical and practical details. Truly it was a great start to the conference, and I took away a lot of new information about the relationship between ‘Fiction and Law, Wife and Whore’ (van Hensbergen), Swift’s Bickerstaff hoax (McTague), and Authorship and Attribution in Defoe studies (McTague as ‘Bernard’). Were it physically possible I could have learned even more about Bickerstaff – as well as William Hodges and the York Theatre Royal – were I able to attend the parallel panel, Panel 2: The ‘national’ and the ‘civic, in Room 9. Evidently the papers by Gunda Windmueller (Bonn), Susan Valladares (Oxford), and Simon Macdonald (Cambridge) in this panel were received very positively.
Lunch followed in the Shakespeare Room, and it was indeed a bountiful buffet. Then, at 1, most of us boarded the coach for a short trip to the Chawton House Library, where we were warmly greeted by Gillian Dow, Susan Carlile, and the staff. On behalf of Debbie, the rest of the BSECS committee, and the delegates I want to offer a heart-felt thank-you to Dr Dow and Chawton for such a hospitable welcome.
In the Dining Room I attended arguably the most controversial panel at the conference, Panel 4: Reading women writers of the later 18th century. Anielka Briggs (Murdoch) opened the proceedings with a fully interactive paper on the “Jane Austen Code”. (Check out http://thejaneaustencode.com for more information.) With the promise of prizes, Briggs asked the attending delegates to fill in the linguistic codes and to trace homophonic connections, amongst other things, in Austen’s novels. Not everyone was convinced by the central argument that this indicated a hidden satire on the court, but the originality of thought, and the innovative prize giving – I won a book on Maria Fitzherbert [Miss Hetty Bates?]! – was a great joy. This was followed by Sarah Moseley’s treatment of Evelina and Sense and Sensibility and the creation of a ‘diagonal social hierarchy’, which necessitated a focus on wealth as much as status. The final speaker, Ema Jelinkova (Palacky), looked at Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote and Austen’s Northanger Abbey. Neatly evoking the stylistic mores of Horace Walpole and others, Jelinkova offered a well-developed take on the gendering of the Gothic novel in the eighteenth century. The questions and answers round perhaps inevitably focused on Brigg’s findings but, overall, broad and local points alike were profitably unpicked by all.
After all this excitement, we were left to explore Chawton House Library and the surrounding area. For more information about Chawton’s academic pursuits, including conferences and events, please do visit their website (www.chawton.org). The website now has an online catalogue, which gives you a taste of their unique holdings. In this spirit the library was kindly opened up to interested delegates, while others explored the beautiful grounds in homage to Austen. And yet, in seemingly no time at all, the coach took us back to Winchester at 5.30pm. The coach was brimful with excitement and I shared some delightful conversation with Penny Pritchard (Hertfordshire), who was equally as effusive about the merits of Chawton as I was. Although I was not privy to the parallel sessions, which included such topics as fashion clothing, exotic birds, eighteenth-century Greek fiction, and slavery, the word on the bus suggested that these were very interesting and original papers. The relationship between satire and feather, I understand, was one such standout avenue of discussion.
Back at Winchester, the Plenary Address by Professor Penelope J. Corfield, the President of BSECS, proved highly appropriate to a conference of this kind. In ‘After Language, Culture, Gender, Space, it’s Time – Hot Themes for the Eighteenth Century’ – a much more provocative title than the one advertised – Corfield gave a lucid account of the role of disciplinary thinking in academia. A self-confessed advocate of interdisciplinarity, Corfield did not shirk the more trenchant issues associated with modern scholarly practices. She began by outlining the collapse of a succession of Grand Narratives – including ones that masquerade as anti-grand narratives – such as the Linguistic Turn, the Cultural Turn, Gender Studies, and even Space Studies. From this basis Corfield neatly advocated a return to ‘diachronic framing’, a rigorous as well as expansive treatment of one’s subject. One particularly thought-provoking consideration was the speaker’s insistence that we should be discussing continuity as much as a change, what stays the same as much as what radically changes, the micro-changes as much as the macro ones. Moreover, and perhaps most intriguingly of all for the majority of those in attendance, Corfield addressed the nature of what she termed ‘receiver disciplines’. Disciplines such as English and History, takes on ideas from theoretically-minded ones. How will the endless creation and collapse of new disciplines, or sub-disciplines, shape the future of academic study in the future? I’ll leave you to ponder that one.
After Corfield’s talk we all enjoyed some pre-dinner drinks and then a lovely conference dinner. Some people had two desserts, thanks to the kind and attentive waiting staff. Those people enjoyed it very much. Then, dinner over, we reconvened in the makeshift bar in the Link Gallery, though many eagerly sought their beds after an exhausting and travel-weary first day.
SATURDAY
First thing Saturday morning, after breakfast in the Shakespeare Room, I chaired a workshop panel on ‘Completing your PhD & Life after a PhD’. The speakers were Elizabeth Stuart, Professor of Christian Theology and Director of Research and Knowledge Transfer at Winchester, and Ruth Herman, based in the Business School at Hertfordshire. Both speakers gave some great and truly honest insight into the topic. I liked to think I provided some useful words, too, having recently finished my own PhD. But really it was Stuart’s advice on finishing in a timely and methodical fashion, and Herman’s encouraging insight into alternatives to academia, that evidently proved most useful to the large group in attendance.
After a short interlude of refreshments, I then chaired another workshop panel, this time on Publishing. The delightful speakers were Linda Bree, a Literature Editor at Cambridge University Press, and Chris Mounsey, Editor of BSECS’ Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Both speakers offered great insight into the terrifying world of publishing, not only in terms of the processes involved but also what the appropriate styles were, amongst other things. The Q&A was jammed with eager questions and spot-on answers from the speakers. Little was left out as Bree and Mounsey delivered a master class in communication as much as publishing.
After a well-earned lunch I attended Panel 13: Britain and Ireland, which comprised three great papers on subjects I had very little knowledge about. On the surface the three papers seemed very different, but the connections soon proved as palpable as they were productive. Chris Ludington (Duke) delighted the seminar room with a confident examination of the role of wine drinking in the formation of British identity in Scotland in the late-eighteenth century. Initially I was concerned that the idea seemed too causal. But, with his well-deployed use of economic and political theory, and no less his nods to Linda Colley and Colin Kidd, Ludington offered some genuine insight into the drinking choices of the officer classes. Following this, Helena Kelly (Oxford) offered an affectionate examination of Elizabeth Hervey – ‘she writes novels’ (Lord Byron) – and the construction of Irishness in her prose. The third paper, by Tsai-Yeh Wang (Birmingham), provided a tour de force of British Women’s travel writings in the 1790s. In sum, the three papers – grouped under the nebulous title ‘Britain and Ireland’ – neatly addressed localised versions of national identity, that of the upper classes at the end of the eighteenth century.
The final sessions of the day, after the mid-afternoon refreshments, offered an ever more overwhelming variety of papers, and addressed such topics as the fiction of Eliza Haywood, Defoe’s non-conformism, and the life and works of Louis Aime-Martin. And, at the same time, Ildiko Csengei (Cambridge) chaired a hands-on workshop run by Mary South (Winchester) on smallpox inoculations in Southampton and the local area.
As is always the way, many attendees had to leave before the end in order to catch trains or planes; but, perhaps as a testament to the quality of this conference, the majority stayed right up until the final words. Debbie duly received warm and well-deserved thanks from all. And then we each went our own way, secure in the knowledge that we knew a little – nay, a lot – more about a great variety of familiar and unfamiliar topics. And, more than that, we were reminded why the eighteenth century was so fascinating a period to study. Yes, if you weren’t there, you really missed out. But, not to worry, in January 2009 we have the annual BSECS conference in Oxford (http://www.bsecs.org.uk/conference09/conferenceDetail.stm).
Tags: BSECS
