Speech, Sound and Dialogue in Early Modern Culture, 1500-1700

A friendly, afternoon symposium celebrating new postgraduate and early career research from York and beyond. All welcome.

In this symposium, we will explore different aspects of early modern performative and oral culture. Reported conversations, dialogues and testimonies could be recorded - or creatively concocted - as vehicles for a variety of personal, philosophical, legal and religious ends. For, in as much as early modern thinkers recognised the power of speech, they also frequently declaimed the dangers of the ‘unruly tongue’. Alongside the innovations of the printing press, printed texts and manuscripts frequently engaged with and tried to reproduce spoken forms - for instance, sermons, drama, ballads and orations. 

3.30-5pm

Session 1: Testimony and the Law

Dr Hillary Taylor  (Cambridge University)
Extracted Speech: The Politics of Testifying in Early Modern England

Aidan Collins (University of York)
Stories of Credit, Debt and Failure in the English Court of Chancery, 1680-1750

Francesca Cioni  (University of York)
“Confuse noises, and clatterings”: Fixed Seating and Disorderly Worship in Early Modern England’

Coffee

5.20-6.45pm

Session 2: Speech and Sound in Literature

Tilly Zeeman (University of York)
The fulness of time was come’: Performing Prophecy  in Lancelot Andrewes’s Christmas Preaching (1609)

Jimena Ruiz Marron (University of York) 
Song and Verse: A Place for Political Debate

Charles Eager (University of Leeds)
The Soundworld of Pericles

Wine Reception

Attendance is free. Please register, if you are thinking of attending.
We very much look forward to see you there.