This one-day conference aims to explore critically productive ways of talking about the nature and role of friendship in the creation and enjoyment of literary texts.
Speakers include: Peter McDonald, Christopher Ricks, Helen Small, Mark Vernon, Cedric Watts
Further details, including online registration, at http://web.me.com/postrestant/THR. Details of the Ricks and Vernon plenary at http://web.me.com/postrestant/Friendship. 'Earlybird' prices and concessions until 28th June.
Speakers details:
Peter McDonald
Author of many books of criticism and poetry, and editor of the forthcoming Longman three-volume edition of W.B. Yeats. (Wikipedia: 'he is an author, university lecturer and critic. He is widely regarded as one of the most incisive, and controversial, critics of contemporary poetry'.) He also runs Tower Poetry, as part of his role as the Christopher Tower Student and Tutor in Poetry in the English Language.
http://www.towerpoetry.org.uk
Representative works of criticism: Mistaken Identitites: Poetry and Northern Ireland (1998); Serious Poetry: Form and Authority from Yeats to Hill (2002)
Christopher Ricks
William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities and Co-Director of the Editorial Institute, Boston University, a recipient of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Distinguished Achievement Award for significant contributions to the humanities, and was Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford (2004-2009). (Wikipedia: 'known as a champion of Victorian poetry; an enthusiast of Bob Dylan, whose lyrics he has analysed at book length; a trenchant reviewer of writers he considers pretentious; and a warm reviewer of those he thinks humane or humorous. Hugh Kenner has praised his "intent eloquence", and Geoffrey Hill his "unrivalled critical intelligence". W.H. Auden described Ricks as "exactly the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding."') Most recently he has published True Friendship (2010). There is a Guardian Profile at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/jan/29/poetry.oxforduniversity
Representative works of criticism: The Force of Poetry (1984); Essays in appreciation (1996)
Helen Small
Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, her chief areas of research interest are in the value of the humanities, the nature of the public intellectual, and the relationship between literature and philosophy. The Long Life (2008), her second monograph, won both the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize and the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism.
Representative works of criticism: Love's Madness: Medicine, The Novel, and Female Insanity, 1800-1865 (1996); The Long Life (2008)
Mark Vernon
Writer, broadcaster and journalist, his work appears regularly in The Guardian, TLS, Evening Standard and on the BBC. His studies began with a degree in physics, followed by two degrees in theology, and a PhD in philosophy. He is an honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London, and a founding member of The School of Life.
http://www.markvernon.com
Representative works: After Atheism: Science, Religion, and the Meaning of Life (2007), The Meaning of Friendship (2010)
Cedric Watts
Research Professor of English at the University of Sussex, and distinguished authority on, and prolific editor of, Conrad and Shakespeare, as well as author, with John Sutherland, of Henry V: War Criminal? and other Shakespearean Puzzles (2000)
Representative works of criticism: ‘“A Bloody Racistâ€: About Achebe’s View of Conrad (1983); Hamlet (1988).
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