All staff and students are welcome to join us for the final Manuscript and Print Cultures Network event on Tuesday 11th June, 5.15pm (FAB 5.49) which comprises a number of short talks from researchers across the Faculty on the theme of Textual Transgressions.
Afterwards there will be a social networking event in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance and includes refreshments.
"Textual Transgressions: Mistakes, Forgeries & Censorship"
Dr Floris Verhaart (ECLS and Renaissance Centre) - "The forgery that never was: Jean Hardouin (1646-1729) and the alleged forgery of classical literature"
Jean Hardouin became notorious for arguing that virtually all of classical literature had been forged in the Middle Ages by a cabal of atheistic Benedictine monks. I will introduce Hardouin's thought and writings and will very briefly point out its relevance for eighteenth-century textual scholarship and for the present day, especially post-communist Russia.
Dr William Rupp (Liberal Arts) – “’A prodigy of one kind or another’: William Henry Ireland, the Shakespeare forgery scandal, and the desire for authenticity”
In 1795/6 the English literary world was rocked by the discovery of a trove of documents, written in Shakespeare’s hand, that answered many burning questions about the Bard’s life, his writing, his thinking, and his morals. The only problem: they had all been forged by William Henry Ireland. In this talk, a short re-examination of one of the great forgery stories allows an examination of not only the motives of one forger but of the desires of the wider public to know with certainty details of the man who had been placed as the English language’s greatest author. It also looks to critical elements relating to how English identity was being (re)created at the end of the eighteenth century.
Dr Jessica Wardaugh (SMLC) - "Fakes and Fantasies in French Print Culture, 1880–1900"
In 1883, Parisian shop-owner René Pineau paid typesetters to modify a political manifesto so that it would advertise hats rather than Napoleon. Pineau’s playful text was just one of a multitude of fakes and parodies on the walls of towns and cities across France in the late nineteenth century, following the liberalizing press laws of the 1880s that had transformed print culture and censorship. Exploring these texts within a wider culture of counterfeits, this short talk will offer some new perspectives on the relationship between politics, consumerism, and fantasy in fin-de-siècle France. A censored poster and counterfeit coin will also be brought along!
Dr Anna Lafranchini (SMLC) - “Concealed translations, authorship, and copyright in Fascist Italy”, discusses examples of the 20th c. Italian translation rights trade for Anna's forthcoming book.
