Friday, May 26, 2006, South Hall 2635, 1-4pm

1:00-1:15 Opening Remarks, Professor Robert Erickson

1:15-1:45 Arden of Tombstone
Viewing and Discussion with Sierra Christman,
Zia Isola’s Engl 157: English Renaissance Drama

1:45-2:00 “The Middle Passage Effect in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko”
Susan Rosenfeld,
E. Heckendorn Cook’s Engl 102: English and American Literature from 1650-1789

2:00-2:15 BREAK

2:15-2:45 “The China Scene” from William Wycherley’s The Country Wife
Performance by: Danielle Allred, Luke Fretwell, Katie Desrochers, Niall Huffman, Stephanie Shenkman
Robert Erickson’s Engl 169: Restoration and Eighteenth Century Drama

2:45 Open Discussion

Reception to follow

The Woman Controversy of early modern England relied on a discourse about women that had been developed by humanist scholars of the late middle ages. Those humanist arguments seemed to argue for women's excellence and virtue but were often elaborate scholarly jokes, travesties of humanist discourse that demonstrated women's inferiority through the ironic and ultimately ridiculous display of rhetoric, argumentation, and biblical allusion. The early modern pamphlet debate about women relied on the very argumentative techniques and materials developed by late medieval scholars, but often (mis)used that discourse to argue earnestly for women's virtue. I suggest that early modern reliance on the inherited arguments can be fruitfully understood as a creative misreading of the humanist discourse.

This paper examines the relationship between the modern conceptual categories of "popular culture," "oral culture," and "oral tradition." For most English authors in 1700, the phrase "oral tradition" would have first brought to mind a Catholic theological notion considered suspect by Protestants, and our modern idea of "oral culture" did not exist. While much recent scholarly work has been devoted to exploring the interface of oral and print cultures, this paper also works to historicize the concepts themselves. Specifically, I argue that eighteenth-century authors' reflection on (and nervousness about) the spread of print was a key factor in the shaping of the modern intellectual category of "oral culture." Whereas early eighteenth-century authors such as Jonathan Swift in A Tale of A Tub typically understood cheap print and popular oralities as on a continuum (associating both with vulgarity, sedition, dissent, and a lack of culture in the sense of refinement, learning, or taste) later eighteenth-century authors increasingly posited a distinct "oral tradition" at once antithetical to and threatened by print commerce. Select oral forms, such as certain types of ballads, would be reconceptualized as purer, more authentic forms under threat of contamination by the vulgar products of the press. Ironically, later eighteenth-century sympathetic reassessments of oral traditions and practices in fact have much in common with earlier phobic depictions: both are part of a historic coming-to-terms with the power and spread of print.

Followed by a panel of respondents with Patricia Fumerton, William Warner, Jessica C. Murphy, and Maggie Sloan.

This event is sponsored by the Early Modern Center, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, and the Departments of English, History, Music, and Women's Studies.

A selection of publications by Professors McBride and McDowell are available in the EMC to read on site.