PRISONS AND PRISON WRITING IN EARLY MODERN BRITAIN

Northumbria University, Newcastle, Monday 10 April 2017

A Regional Day Conference of the International John Bunyan Society, organized in association with the University of Bedfordshire, Keele University, and Northumbria University

Plenary speakers include Dr Jerome de Groot, University of Manchester and Professor Molly Murray, Columbia University, New York.

CALL FOR PAPERS

John Bunyan is famous as a ‘prisoner of conscience’, and The Pilgrim’s Progress was written during his twelve-year incarceration in Bedford jail. The early modern period saw a dramatic increase in the prison population, and prison writing emerged as a major cultural form. The purpose of this interdisciplinary conference is to explore the experience of imprisonment and some of the diverse writings that emerged from prisons during the early modern period. Papers may focus on, for example, prisons and penal law; the physical conditions of prison life; the literary effects of imprisonment; the purposes of writings from prison; specific prison writers and writings. Please send a title and brief (200-word) summary of a 20-minute paper – no later than 1 February 2017 – to: David Walker (david5.walker(at)northumbria.ac.uk), Rachel Adcock (r.c.adcock(at)keele.ac.uk) and Bob Owens (bob.owens(at)beds.ac.uk).