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Forwarded message
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From:    Jeff Persels <[log in to unmask]>

Call for Papers:
1540 in France: a Time of Change
AN INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE IN AN INTERDISCIPLINARY INVESTIGATION

Ideas of periodization equip us to approach a work or event with a set of
expectations which may be met or not, providing grounds to form questions
or connections.  The expert reader's notions of period are cousins to his
or her notions of genre, used to set a horizon of expectations against
which to respond.  Rather than being a rigid template taking its terms
from external political events, a more inductively derived periodization
is a tool which can illuminate general tendencies, link apparently
disparate works, and serve as measure of change or progress. 1540 in this
context is meant as a general marker rather than a precise point in time,
the decade (ca 1535-45), say.  The epistemological shifts being
investigated tend to be reflections of the gathering forces of a complex
set of cultural currents properly tied to a single polity, a single
linguistic and cultural domain; for that reason, the present project is
limited to France. A short, incomplete list of things I perceive of as
changing at about this time in France may suggest some broad categories
into which projects you are currently thinking about may be cast: 

Writer's self-fashioning and their sense of the purpose of their work.
How France and the glory of France is treated.
How the cultural balance between the French past and the Greco-roman past
is imagined.

The purpose of this message is to solicit contributions from a varied
group of colleagues, so that we can examine the question together in the
light of the special knowlege each of us brings to the discussion.  This
invitation is intended for scholars in a variety of disciplines,
literature certainly, but also art history and history of all kinds, to
consider the period roughly around 1540 as a point of change and to
prepare a paper for sessions on this subject at the Sixteenth Century
Studies Conference in Cleveland, 2-4 November, 2000. 

My intention is to go further and collect versions of these pieces to
present to a publisher as a coherent volume presenting an
interdisciplinary examinations of the epistemological shift around 1540 by
the Summer of 2000 but that will depend on your contributions. 

Proposals for papers at the 2000 Sixteenth Century Studies Conference
relevant to this topic by March 10, 2000 to: 

Professor Marian Rothstein
Carthage College
Kenosha,  WI 53140.
e-mail: [log in to unmask]


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