Samuel Johnson and Poetic Labour

"Thou art a Retailer of Phrases; And dost deal in Remnants of Remnants, Like a maker of Pincushions." Unknown artist, 1803, courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London. 

The Colloquium on Romanticism and the Long Eighteenth Century is delighted to announce its first return speaker - Prof. Frans De Bruyn (University of Ottawa). 

Prof. De Bruyn will give a talk at 2.30pm, on Friday, February the 28th, in the refurbished Gordon Wood Lounge (Dunton Tower 1811) on an intriguing subject - Dr. Johnson and Poetic Labour.  Sumptuous refreshments will be served.

Read a sneak preview here!

“In my talk, I propose to show how Johnson conceives of the art of writing in Virgilian georgic terms, as labour, and how this conception of writing as labour culminates in a characteristically eighteenth-century critical ideal: an aesthetic of laboured style and form. This view of literary creativity as a function primarily of work rather than the unbidden promptings of genius, as much a matter of perspiration as inspiration, makes a significant contrast, as I will show, with prevailing conceptions of the creative act in the historical periods preceding and following the eighteenth century.”

Eighteenth-Century Prints in France and England

CORAL is delighted to announce a talk by Prof. Stéphane Roy, on Thursday, Mar. 21^st, at 2 pm, in the Gordon Wood Lounge (DT 1811). 

One of our co-organizers, Emma, has had the pleasure of hearing a version of this talk, and it was sensational!  Prof. Roy takes a transnational approach, comparing the prestige and influence of French and English prints at different periods of the eighteenth century, and looks at mixed printmaking techniques as performance, spectacle, and narrative.  The way that prints told stories – both as illustrations of novels and as freestanding cycles of images – is really gripping.

Hogarth self-portrait courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London



Prof. Roy's research has included printmaking, propaganda, and the French Revolution, and has branched into book history and travel illustration.  He has served as curator at the Yale Center for British Art and at the Portrait Gallery of Canada.

Refreshments will be served!

Alexander Grammatikos and Emma Peacocke cordially welcome you on behalf of CORAL and the English Department.