Dr. Máté Vince
Since October 2017, I am an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at Trinity College Dublin. My new project investigates how the notions of authority and ambiguity evolved throughout controversies of the Reformation. In what ways does an ambiguous oath challenge the authority of the questioner? Who has the authority to determine what questions are appropriate to ask? Can a subject’s religious conscience justify the resistance to royal
authority? The outcome of the project will be the first book-length exploration of the interconnected development of the early modern notions of authority and ambiguity. The book will identify Europe-wide ways in which secular, religious and literary authority was reconceptualised vis-à-vis new theories of meaning and interpretation. I will also translate some of the key Latin texts of the controversies, and publish them online and in print.
Until September 2017, I was a research fellow on Dr Paul Botley's Leverhulme-funded project, 'The Correspondence of Isaac Casaubon, 1610-14'. The project was jointly hosted by the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies and the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance. We worked on the critical edition of Casaubon’s correspondence from his arrival in England in 1610 until his death in 1614. The edition will be published in four volumes in early 2018 by Droz, and will include all the letters to and from Casaubon during the period. This amounts to more than 700 letters, almost half of which have never been published. It will be the first critical edition of the remaining letters. Every letter will be equipped with an English synopsis, critical apparatus and explanatory notes.
I did my PhD at the English Department at Warwick. My project, supervised by Professor Peter Mack, was entitled ‘From “aequivocatio” to the “Jesuitical Equivocation”’. I analysed the ways in which ambiguity occurred in sixteenth century English and Latin educational texts and examined how the doctrine of ‘Jesuitical equivocation’ evolved throughout the theological controversy. I used this as a cultural-historical background against which to read Sidney’s Arcadia, and Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Macbeth. To demonstrate the parallels between religio-political discourse and literature, the thesis looked at common assumptions about how meaning is produced, conveyed, understood, misunderstood, or allowed to be misunderstood.
After my PhD I was an Early Career Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study (Warwick). During this fellowship I worked on publications and organised a conference on using, misusing and abusing Latin and the Classical tradition in Early Modernity.
Education and Teaching experience
Since 2014, I have lectured on Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe and Shakespeare, and I convened the Latin for Research in the Humanities Course at the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance.
In 2013/14, I taught several groups on the first year Medieval to Renaissance Literature module, as well as the Introduction to Middle English course.
In 2011/12, I taught on the first year Medieval to Renaissance Literature module.
Before transferring to Warwick, I began my PhD at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, under the supervision of Professor Géza Kállay, with whom I also worked together as a teaching assistant on a number of courses, including Reading Macbeth Line by Line, Shakespeare’s Problem Plays, Shakespeare’s Histories. I also taught the BA seminar Medieval and Renaissance Literature on my own twice. I was a visiting scholar at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon for one term in 2008.
It was at the same university that I received my MAs in English (with TESOL qualification), in Latin and in Aesthetics.
As part of my MA in English, I studied for one semester at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven as an ERASMUS student, I participated in the English Literature Summer School at the University of Cambridge International Summer Schools.
Publications
I have published papers and book reviews on Renaissance English literature, Hungarian literature, Classical literature in English and in Hungarian, as well as translations from English to Hungarian. For details, see my Publications page.
Conference Participations
I have given an invited paper at the University of Tübingen (Germany) and delivered papers at conferences on English and Classics both in the UK and in Hungary. For details, see my Conferences page.
Other Activities
In 2016/17 I co-organised STVDIO, the research seminar series of the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance.
Since 2015, I have been editing and maintaining the website of the Society for Neo-Latin Studies.
In 2011 I co-organised the English Postgraduate Symposium.
In 2010/11 I was a co-organiser of the Arts Faculty Seminar Series, supported by the English Department, the Italian Department and the HRC.
I am a co-organiser of the Theology Reading Group, hosted by the English Department
In September 2010 I co-organised an international conference on Cultural Memory at the Department of English Studies of Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest.
Dr Máté Vince
Mate dot Vince at tcd dot ie
Office: H 4.53