The Relation of Literature and Learning to Social Hierarchy in Early Modern Europe

The following sessions will be held at 2.00p.m. (ending by 3.30p.m.) in Hilary Term 2015 in All Souls College, Oxford (except for the first two sessions -- their time and location are different). There will normally be two papers per session.

All very welcome. Convenor: Neil Kenny [neil.kenny@all-souls.ox.ac.uk]

21 January (Colin Matthews Room, History Faculty)Conversation avec ROBERT DESCIMON (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris): L’hiérarchie sociale en France sous l’Ancien Régime
Session to be held in French, at 12.30pm, ending by 1.55pm. Sandwiches will be provided free of charge on a first come first served basis for all attending.

22 January (Maison Française, Norham Road)ROBERT DESCIMON (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris): Les incertitudes des structures hiérarchiques de la société française et le statut des “écrivains” au 16e siècle
Session to be held jointly with the Early Modern French Seminar, in French, at 5.15pm

28 January (Wharton Room, All Souls)WARREN BOUTCHER (Queen Mary, University of London): Sixteenth-Century Vernacular Renaissances and Social Hierarchies
ROBERT BLACK (University of Leeds): Languages and Society in Renaissance Florence

9 February (Old Library, All Souls)COLIN BURROW (All Souls College, Oxford): Poetry and Social Status in Early Modern England
TIM CHESTERS (University of Cambridge): Stealth Tax in a Love Poem by Étienne de La Boétie

25 February (Wharton Room, All Souls)ABIGAIL BRUNDIN (University of Cambridge): “Prayerful reading”: Hierarchies of Devotional Reading in the Early Modern Catholic Home
MARTIN McLAUGHLIN (Magdalen College, Oxford): Alberti’s Humanism: The Family, Cobblers and Renaissance Men

11 March (Wharton Room, All Souls)GIORA STERNBERG (Hertford College, Oxford): Writing Social Hierarchy: Ceremonial Records in Early Modern France
MARK GREENGRASS (University of Sheffield): Antoine de Laval’s Dessein des professions nobles (1605) and the Taxonomy of Élites