Enfilade

This interdisciplinary conference is devoted to investigations of ‘the Marginal and the Mainstream’ in and between Italy and Great Britain in the eighteenth century. A number of sessions may be of interest to HECAA members, particularly the ‘Cultural Transfers’ and ‘Taste in the Arts’  panels. For registration details and accommodation information, see the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies website. –FG

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Third Anglo Italian Conference: The Marginal and the Mainstream in the Eighteenth Century
King’s Manor, York, 13-14 September 2011

Event Organisers: Frank O’Gormanand Lia Guerra

The counterpoint between the marginal and the mainstream has been for many decades a compelling and an important one. The idea of a ‘mainstream’ or ‘major stream’ may have an aquatic origin but in recent centuries has come to be associated with the idea of important or principal matters in hand, implying also the notion of something important, mighty, or even popular. In recent decades, the implication of ‘scholarly fashion’ may also have been added. Down to the sixteenth century the notion of ‘the marginal’ referred to the margin of a text, the space between the edge of the book and the text itself. Later, this idea admitted the concept of a boundary and later still the notion of the contour and border beyond which something ceases to be possible and desirable. Today, most scholars recognise a yet further extension to these definitions, the idea of dissident ideas, practices or opinions existing on the sidelines of the majority. (more…)