Keats’s Reading / Reading Keats
London
July 20-22, 2018
Proposals are invited for a bicentennial conference on “Keats’s Reading / Reading Keats,” to be held in London July 20-22, 2018. The conference will coincide with the launch of a digital edition of John Keats’s richly annotated copy of Paradise Lost, which is being prepared by the three conference organizers (Daniel Johnson, Beth Lau, and Greg Kucich).
To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Keats’s close study of Milton’s epic poem (dating from 1818), the conference will explore the topic of writers reading and responding to other writers. Participants are invited to examine either Keats’s intertextual dialogues with other poets or prose writers, or later writers’ (or artists’) creative engagement with Keats’s poetry. Papers may also examine the reception history of Keats’s poetry over the past two centuries. Speakers are especially encouraged (but not required) to consider marginalia as evidence of Keats’s or other writers’ reading practices and engagements with particular texts.
The first day of the conference will take place at Keats House, Hampstead, and will include a keynote address by Susan Wolfson and an evening reception. The second and third days will be held at the University of Notre Dame’s London Global Gateway located in Trafalgar Square. The organisers plan subsequently to publish a volume of selected papers from the conference. Please send 250-word proposals by November 17, 2017, to keats18@nd.edu.