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

◊  ◊  ◊  ◊  ◊

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.

P R O G R A M M E

Tuesday, 13 September

9:00  Registration

10:15  Welcome

11:00  Session 1 — Cultural Mediators

• Lidia De Michelis (Università Statale, Milano) “Letters from London: A ‘Bridge’ between Italy and Europe”
• Matteo Ubezio (Università Statale, Milano) “The Margins at the Centre: Giuseppe Baretti’s Uncharted Italy”

1:00  Buffet Lunch

2:00  Session 2 — Commuting People

• Anton Caruana Galizia (St. Edmund Hall, Oxford) “Negotiating a Marriage in Eighteenth-Century Sicily”
• Silvia Granata (Università di Pavia) “Tiberio Cavallo: A Natural Philosopher between Italy and Britain”
• Francesca Saggini (Università della Tuscia) “In the Cut: Italian Castrati on the London Scene”

4:00  Tea

4:30  Session 3 — Commuting Ideas

• Federico Bonzi (Università L’Orientale, Napoli) “Due posizioni a confronto nel dibattito settecentesco sull’’onore’: la Scienza cavalleresca di Scipione Maffei e  l’Enquiry into the origin of Honour di Bernard Mandeville”
• Emilio Sergio (Università della Calabria) “‘Anglomania’ and ‘National Culture’: The Problem of National Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century Italy”

Wednesday, 14 September

9:30  Session 4 — Models and Theories

• Angelo Canavesi (Università di Pavia) “Persons and Individuals in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Narrative Models)”
• Andrea Gatti (Università di Ferrara) “Marginal Aesthetic Theories in Eighteenth-Century England”

11:00  Coffee

11:30  Session 5 — Cultural Transfers

• Rosamaria Loretelli (Università Federico II,  Napoli) “The Reception of the Picaresque in Italy and Britain: From the Cultural Backwaters to the Literary Mainstream”
• Patrizia Nerozzi Bellman (IULM, Milano) “From Clarissa’s Sensibility in Samuel Richardson’s Novel to the Romantic Dream of Self-Realization in Ugo Foscolo’s Ortis”

1:00  Buffet Lunch

2:00  Session 6 — Taste and the Arts

• Carly Collier (Warwick University) “From ‘Gothic Atrocities’ to Objects of Aesthetic Appreciation: The Transition from Marginal to Mainstream of Early Italian Art in British Taste during the Long Eighteenth Century”
• Tomas Macsotay (University of Leeds) “Autonomy, Propriety and Eccentricity in Foreign Artists’ Circles in Rome (c.1760-1800)”

4:00  Tea

4:30  Session 7 — A Wider World

• Hiroko Kondo (Toyo University) “Algarotti and the Influence of the East”
• Rosalie McCrea (Kuwait University) “Some Thoughts on John Blagrove’s Portrait”