Modernist Continuities: Virginia Woolf and Women in Turkey

For the 2023 Blackfriars Conference, we are soliciting three different types of submissions:

Plenary papers – Since 2001, we have featured papers that explore the performative conditions of early modern plays, the effect of place on those performances, the practices of the players, and the texts themselves through time. These 10 minute (13 minutes for presenters employing actors to demonstrate a point) plenary presentations take place on the Blackfriars Stage. To present a plenary paper, please submit a 250-300 word abstract outlining your topic.

First published in 1601, Love’s Martyr is usually read in parts. One part in particular, William Shakespeare’s poem on the phoenix and the turtle-dove, has won the book its lasting reputation – but at the cost  of consigning the rest of it to obscurity. Only over recent decades, with the revival of interest in Shakespeare’s poetry, have scholars found more to say about the collection as a whole. Thanks to them, Shakespeare’s untitled poem – usually known as ‘The Phoenix and Turtle’ – has increasingly been read in the context of the volume’s ‘Poeticall Essaies’, where Shakespeare features alongside John Marston, Ben Jonson, and George Chapman.