Call for Statements — Shakespeare Seminar at the Shakespeare-Tage 2016
Shades of Green – Shakespeare's Green Wor(l)ds

In Shakespeare's colourful world, green, arguably, holds a special place. It is the colour that pre-eminently connects the human sphere to the natural world. At the same time, Shakespeare uses green metaphorically to refer to a range of human conditions whose relation to natural processes is more oblique. Some of Shakespeare's characters, both female and male, are "troubled with the green sickness", while others fall victim to "green-eyed jealousy" or are haunted by the "green-eyed monster". In Shakespeare, eyes are "as green as leek", and "estates are green". In some cases the metaphor evokes the notion of immature, juvenile or foolish behaviour, for example when "orators are too green". In other cases, like the green sickness, the meaning is more technical. There are, however, also semantic fields that are more elusive, and in which the colour green is less clearly defined, semantic fields, for example, that open up ecocritical or other contemporary theoretical frameworks. In our seminar, we would like to explore these different semantic fields and bring to the fore the manifold uses of green in Shakespeare's plays and poems.
Our seminar plans to address Shakespeare's green wor(l)ds with a panel of six papers during the annual conference of the German Shakespeare Association, Shakespeare-Tage (22-24 April 2016 in Bochum, Germany). As critical input for the discussion and provocation for debate, we invite papers of no more than 15 minutes that present concrete case studies, concise examples and strong views on the topic. Please send your proposals (abstracts of 300 words) and all further questions by 30 November 2015 to the seminar convenors:

Lukas Lammers, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg: lukas.lammers@fau.de
Kirsten Sandrock, Universität Göttingen: ksandrock@phil.uni-goettingen.de

See also: http://shakespeare-gesellschaft.de/publikationen/seminar.html