In July Dr Harry Newman will be presenting papers at two major conferences. Abstracts Below:<\/p>\n
Reading Conference in Early Modern Studies (9-11 July 2013) \u2013 Paper Proposal<\/b><\/p>\n
\u2018[A] form in wax, \/ By him imprinted\u2019: Poetry and the Seal of Metaphor in A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/i><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n How did Shakespeare and his contemporaries conceptualise the rhetorical figure of \u2018translation\u2019 or metaphor? I address this question by focusing on an aspect of the metaphorical language in A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/i>. Critics such as Raphael Lyne have argued that Shakespeare\u2019s comedy not only employs metaphor but investigates its role in the relationship between language and the mind. Bottom\u2019s \u2018translation\u2019 transforms him into the ass with whom he shares an analogical affinity, and Theseus\u2019s reference to how the poet\u2019s imagination \u2018bodies forth \/ The forms of things unknown\u2019 can be interpreted as a metaphor for metaphor.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dream<\/i>\u2019s engagement with the phenomenology of metaphor is nuanced by what I call the play\u2019s \u2018language of impression\u2019, and in particular its images of the highly impressionable substance that was often associated with femininity, wax. Theseus\u2019 declaration in the opening scene that Hermia is \u2018but as a form in wax\u2019 that has been \u2018imprinted\u2019 by her father produces an enduring image through which the play engages with themes of love, sexuality and generation. I argue that the sealing analogy functions not only as a simile for biological reproduction, but also as a figuration of several interrelated experiences of body and mind that were traditionally linked to sealing metaphorically. The recurring image of imprinted wax\u2014a rhetorical as well as a sigillographic \u2018figure\u2019\u2014even contributes to the play\u2019s interrogation into the nature and effect of metaphors themselves.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Early Modern Paratexts conference, University of Bristol (26 July 2013)<\/b><\/p>\n \u2018<\/span><\/b>[M]<\/span><\/b>y intentions herein are honest and iust\u2019: Prefacing Printed Gynaecological and Obstetrical Texts in Early Modern England<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n The late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries saw an enormous proliferation of printed vernacular texts that discussed and illustrated the female reproductive organs. The production and circulation of these gynaecological and obstetrical texts, which included midwifery manuals such as Thomas Raynalde\u2019s The Birth of Mankind<\/i> (1545) as well as sections within large anatomical works like Helkiah Crooke\u2019s Mikrokosmographia<\/i> (1615), inflamed moral outrage, even within the medical establishment. Many people went so far as to denounce the publications as pornography. If there was a \u2018stigma of print\u2019 in this period, the disgrace associated with printing books that examined what Crooke calls women\u2019s \u2018obscoene parts\u2019 was all the more acute.<\/p>\n This paper examines the ways in which the prefatory materials to these works negotiated and even exploited the anxieties attendant upon publishing women\u2019s \u2018secrets\u2019 in early modern England. I consider how prefatory writers \u2013 not just authors but also translators and publishers \u2013 justified the publications to \u2018legitimate readers\u2019 (modest women and medical professionals) and admonished the intrusiveness of \u2018illegitimate readers\u2019 (laymen). In doing so, I illustrate that these writers employed rhetorical strategies which, while explicitly establishing the publications\u2019 legitimacy, fetishized the books in order to make them more attractive to consumers driven by prurient curiosity. In particular, I focus on their use of metaphors that analogise the printing of gynaecological and obstetrical texts for public consumption with prostitution and child-birth, tropes deployed to express or deny feelings of embarrassment and even shame. Through such rhetoric, I argue, the prefatory writers constructed the books as erotic objects and thereby capitalised on their market potential.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In July Dr Harry Newman will be presenting papers at two major conferences. 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