Backward I look upon my life,
And see one waste of storm and strife
Co-hosted by Brontë Parsonage Museum and Leeds University Library Special Collections
Symposium date: 8 November 2017
Location: Treasures of the Brotherton, University of Leeds
Keynote speaker: Dr Jonathon Shears, University of Keele
‘Branwell and Byronic self-fashioning’
In her biography of Branwell Brontë, Daphne du Maurier described Branwell as ‘a spectre in the Brontë story, in pathetic contrast with the astonishing achievements of his sisters’. 2017 is Branwell’s bicentenary year, and Brontë Parsonage Museum is marking the occasion with a number of events and an exhibition curated by Simon Armitage, entitled Mansions in the Sky. Leeds University Library Special Collections (which holds a substantial collection of original and transcribed material by, or relating to, different members of the Brontë family, including a number by Branwell) and Brontë Parsonage Museum are co-hosting a one-day interdisciplinary symposium which seeks to explore and interrogate not only the figure of Branwell Brontë, but the context of the early Victorian culture in which he struggled to fulfil his ambitions.
Papers are invited on a broad range of topics, such as:
Early Victorian models of masculinity
Concept/appeal of the Byronic hero
Romanticism
Landscape
Juvenilia
Victorian magazine culture (eg Blackwoods Magazine)
Role of the artist
Depression
Alcoholism/opium addiction
Mental health
Abstract submission guideline: Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words to Diane Fare at diane.fare@bronte.org.uk by 1 July 2017. The abstract should include a title, name and affiliation of the speaker, and a contact email address. Postgraduate students are very welcome. Papers will be a maximum of 20 minutes in length, with a maximum of 10 minutes for questions.
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