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(Re)Reading John Addington Symonds
Plenary Speakers: Howard J. Booth (Manchester) and Hilary Fraser (Birkbeck).
Interest in John Addington Symonds has revived in recent years due to the 1984 publication of his Memoirs (edited by Phyllis Grosskurth), a unique and important record of Victorian homosexuality. He has since become an important figure for historians of sexuality and queer criticism. Despite this resurgence, Symonds has remained a marginalised figure; his participation across multiple academic and creative disciplines is largely excluded from the canon of nineteenth century cultural criticism. This has prompted John Pemble to write: ‘[Symonds’s contemporary readership] kept his reputation alive and most of his books in print until the 1930s; but his prestige faded as they aged and died off.’
Interest in Symonds has grown and diversified during the 2000s. This international symposium will provide a forum within which to assimilate and evaluate this new and emerging work; it will offer a wide ranging re-assessment of Symonds, exploring his contribution to multiple disciplines and his significance for current fields of academic study. Papers might address (but are not limited to): • Symonds and art/art history • Symonds and Hellenism • Symonds as ‘man of letters’; literary critic; historian; poet; essayist; translator • Symonds and nineteenth-century science; sexology; evolution • Symonds and life writing • Symonds and travel writing • Symonds in collaboration • Symonds and his contemporaries • Symonds and his critics/advocates • Symonds and publication; textuality; book history • Symonds’s reception, reputation and ‘afterlife’ • Symonds and gender/sexuality Abstracts for 15 to 20 minute papers (c. 250 words) should be emailed to a.k.regis@engl.keele.ac.uk by 18 June 2010. Informal enquiries should be addressed to the organisers: David Amigoni (d.amigoni@engl.keele.ac.uk) and Amber K. Regis (a.k.regis@engl.keele.ac.uk). |