“Living fame no fortune can confound”: Richard Barnfield’s Legacy
Sapienza University of Rome, 9-10 February 2023

Co-organized by:

Camilla Caporicci (University of Perugia)
Fabio Ciambella (Sapienza University of Rome)
Cristiano Ragni (University of Verona)

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Tania Demetriou (University of Cambridge)
Andrew Hadfield (University of Sussex)

Sometimes considered the rival poet in Shakespeare’s sonnets (Daugherty 2010), Richard Barnfield has certainly been one of the most unjustly neglected poets of early modern England, also due to the homosexual and homoerotic content of his best-known works, i.e., The Affectionate Shepherd and the sonnets. Object of growing scholarly attention in recent years, a large part of Barnfield’s eclectic and cultivated poetic output is still vastly understudied.
The aim of this conference is to shed new light on Barnfield’s work, exploring both his poetic achievements and his linguistic contribution to the shaping of early modern English, not underestimating his learned use of sources.
We welcome 20-minute paper proposals on (but not limited to) the following topics:
− Re-assessing Barnfield’s canon
− Intertextuality and interdiscursivity in Barnfield’s work
− Barnfield’s relationship with his sources
− Barnfield’s engagement with different poetic genres (sonnets, epyllia, etc.)
− Barnfield’s work within the early modern English literary and linguistic panorama
− Stylistic approaches to Barnfield’s poems Please, send proposals of no more than 250 words and a short bio sketch to the three co-organisers at camilla.caporicci@unipg.it, fabio.ciambella@uniroma1.it and cristiano.ragni@univr.it. Proposals should also clearly state your name(s), a working title for your paper and your affiliation(s). Deadline for proposals: 30th September 2022 Notification of acceptance: by 30th October 2022
A selection of papers will be proposed for publication in a collection of essays.