Tuesday 26 November, 5.15-6.30pm

Hovenden Room, All Souls College

Hannah McIntyre (Pembroke College)- Leonora Carrington in French: Language, Madness and Power

Leonora Carrington’s residence in France lasted only three years of her long and varied life, yet during this time and the period immediately following it, she produced some of the most enduring artistic and literary works of her career, writing in both French and English. With the recent rediscovery of Carrington’s writing in the Anglophone world, this paper aims to bring an overview of Carrington’s work in French; questioning particularly how her use of the language intersects with the gendered power dynamics at work in the Surrealist circle.

Alex Lawrence (Keble College)- A New Order of Animal: The Transference and Transformation of the Toucan in Early Modern Travel and Nature Writing

Aesthetically appealing, bizarrely formed, and with an impossible beak, the toucans of America captivated the imagination of European travellers and naturalists in the ‘New World’. From the ‘unknown’ species of Pierre Belon’s Histoire de la nature des oyseaux, to the ‘monstrous’ creature of Ambroise Paré and its elegant depiction in the paradise landscape painting of Rubens, the bird enjoyed notable attention across a range of different genres and media in the sixteenth century. This process of transmission and assimilation into European consciousness constituted an evolutionary flight for the species, which gradually cast a different figure as it became stratified within cultural topoi and scientific discourses. This paper will underline the initial stages of this process, seeking to demonstrate how representations of the toucan developed over time, and how the bird might provide an insight into the transference and dissemination of texts, objects and information of the ‘New World’ in early modern cultures.