Tuesday 18th February 2020, 5.15-6.30pm

Old Library, All Souls College

Lisa Nicholson (University of Cambridge) - Translating the Vagabonde: Figuring Exile in the Operas of the Mazarin Salon

When Hortense Mancini Duchess of Mazarin arrived in England on 31st December 1675, she came in sodden men's attire with few possessions and plenty of scandal in tow. Having fled her abusive husband several years earlier, Mancini was constantly called upon to defend herself as an 'errant Lady', particularly after she made the decision to publish her memoirs that marked the first time a European woman had allowed her life-writing to enter the public domain during her lifetime and under her own name. Once installed in London, Mancini established the Mazarin salon, which brought together an eclectic mix of European exiles and Restoration London's cultural elite who collaborated on a series of operatic pieces. In this paper, I will examine the representation of Mancini and the salon's habitués in these operas, which form a narrative on exile, loss, and displacement.

Anton Bruder (University of Cambridge)- Changing Tastes among Sixteenth-Century Readers: From the Roman de la Rose to Amadis de Gaule


A medieval best-seller, the Roman de la Rose sailed into the age of print on a wave of popularity. In the first fifty years following the introduction of the printing press to France (1470) the Rose went through twenty-one editions, being printed in a variety of formats at both Paris and Lyons. After a final edition in 1536, however, this book vanished from bookshops; it was not to be published again till the eighteenth century. What might account for the sudden fading of the Rose? And what might the publishing success of the Amadis de Gaule serial have to tell us about the mysterious disappearance of the time-honoured classic? For just a few years later, in 1540, the French reading public would be gripped by Amadis-fever. Amadis de Gaule, the last and greatest hero of chivalric romance, galloped across the shelves of readers of every station for the better part of a century, from kings to farmhands, in adventures spread over twenty-seven sprawling volumes. Amadis, however, burst not from the manuscript pages of medieval legend, but from the imagination of a series of translator-authors working in the first half of the sixteenth century, authors deeply committed to the modern ideal of Renaissance. Is there more to this change in taste than meets the eye? Perhaps it was not so marked a change after all; on closer inspection Amadis and the Rose have much in common. More fundamental, however, is the question of how we measure the popularity of a text, whether today or five hundred years ago. Ultimately this paper asks: what makes a classic – and what unmakes it?

Tuesday 4th February 2020, 5.15-6.30pmOld Library, All Souls College

Nathalie Jeter (St Cross College)- Chronicles of Exile: Loss and Identity in the Memoirs of Early Modern Huguenot Refugees

The memoirs of Isaac Dumont de Bostaquet chronicle his adventures and misadventures across four countries as a French Huguenot refugee. What does the language in which he describes his gains and losses reveal about the identity Dumont is seeking, consciously or subconsciously, to portray? What might this language tell us concerning the role of memoir in shaping the identity of early modern Huguenots in exile? To what extent is the narrative shaping in Dumont’s account characteristic of Huguenot refugee self-writing? This paper addresses the role of memoir in the construction of community identity and argues that Huguenot refugee accounts are essentially narratives of loss in which loss, treated both materially and emotionally, is a means of regeneration. It considers notions of exemplarity and singularity in Dumont’s account against the greater corpus of Huguenot self-narratives, exploring ways in which Dumont’s framework may have influenced the redefinition of individual and cultural identity among French Protestant immigrant populations.

 Vincent Roy-Di Piazza (Linacre College)- The Visions of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) in the Context of dialogues des morts Literature 

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) was a Swedish civil servant, natural philosopher and mystic theologian, assessor at the Board of Mines of Sweden for thirty-one years (1716-1747). In 1747 Swedenborg retired to focus on theology, claiming to have acquired through divine grace the gift to speak with angels and the spirits of the dead. Swedenborg’s theological works subsequently drew heavily on his alleged regular conversations with the dead. Mostly remembered as a seer, Swedenborg is best known by the public for his detailed visionary descriptions of the spiritual world. However, scholarship has long neglected to contextualize Swedenborg’s conversations with the dead in relationship to other popular literary genre at the time such as the dialogues des morts, famously exemplified in France by figures such as Fontenelle, Fénelon and Voltaire. This paper will investigate to what extent Swedenborg’s visionary works featured typical characteristics of dialogues des morts literature. By doing so it will provide evidence for a drastically new picture of Swedenborg, as a versatile recombiner of literary genres determined to spread his theology to new audiences. More broadly, the paper will showcase underrated interactions between dialogues des morts literature, mysticism and satire during the 18th century.