A Newsletter of the Faculty of English Volume 12, 2012

The Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio

“studio, n. Pronunciation: /ˈstju ːdɪəʊ / Etymology: < Italian studio: see study n. †1. Fine Art. = study n. 10. Obs. rare— 1. 1819 Shelley Let. 25 Feb. (1964) II. 80 The most remarkable is the original studio by Michaelangelo of the day of judgment.

2. a. The work-room of a sculptor or painter; also, that of a photographer. c. Cinematogr. A room in which a cinematographic film is shot. Hence, a film-making complex including film studios and attendant offices and premises (also in pl.); the company which runs this. Cf. film studio n. at film n. Compounds 5.” Trevor Joyce reading (Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellow 2009-10) From: OED Online: http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/192072 Theatre, or ‘The Theatre’ or ‘drama’ or This is perhaps a more unusual resource ?redirectedFrom=studio& even ‘performance’ – all of which supply for a university department to have than no official accolade or qualification for a it at first seems, as surely there are many Poetry readings | Play readings | Prose graduate to depart with in hand, is technologically-equipped studio-like readings | Readings | Live-streamed everywhere. Many early career paths into spaces in which the collision of debate readings | recordings | film-showings | show business have begun their and ideas between academics, students film-making| painting class | ballet | excavation here, and indeed most of the and the general public can take place. contemporary dance | dramaturgy | country’s ‘top’ jobs in theatre purportedly Over the more than eight years of its student plays | Clowning workshops | still salary people who read something existence, the studio has been both a Experimental music | Classical music | other than theatre at Cambridge. venue for significant cultural occasions, Butoh | Miscellaneous Theatre Festivals | albeit on an intimate scale, as much as it Space which it is difficult to negotiate | The Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio ~ has been an invaluable space for Unperformable theatre | multi-lingual located literally and notionally in the students and teachers to encounter one readings & performances | Artistic basement of the Faculty of English ~ is another in ways which newly challenge residencies | Professional & student both a venue and a studio: a place where how innumerable forms of work are performances completed productions can be seen by treated and considered. the public, and also a place in which First, the studio is a studio: and in this it or students and others, there are work can be developed and worked at, serves its main function, providing a many venues in which to peruse or or worked out. large isolated space – with an array of Fpursue one of Cambridge’s most lighting possibilities from almost pitch popular extra-curricular activities and There have been poetry readings in darkness to stadium brightness, and a exports. almost total darkness, the speaker’s range of acoustic possibilities. There are delivery amplified yet as quiet as a props, costumes, objects and machines, Each eight-week term there is a hectic whisper in your ear, and in another time, materials which are free to use. You can calendar of productions incorporating but perhaps not entirely at the other end play large and loud here, but also, experimental theatre, musicals, plays of any notional spectrum, the entire crucially, miniscule and whisperingly. classical and contemporary, as well as room has been transformed into a beach, Primarily, it is a space in which activities numerous other discrete cultural works complete with sand, sea, mollusks and related to the making and study of and practices. live-streamed whales. poetry and drama can be explored,

www.english.cam.ac.uk shared and studied – in a room whose Many places are venues for a variety work can be transmitted or delivered with infinite varieties of atmosphere can be of activities and events, and many may lay absolute clarity and distinction. What all handled directly by those present. claim to their own distinctive cultural studios should provide, however, is space significance, but something which has in which these things as a given can be As a most rudimentary teaching tool or persistently remained an integral aspect of questioned, elaborated, modified or exercise in which any text may be a lot of the work produced in the studio is discarded or replaced entirely. encountered, the studio provides a space the porosity via which people can come to in which a text can be performed live, in engage with it. It is perhaps important to note that over fragmentary or complete form, in the last six or seven years at least, there radically different ways, accommodating It is tricky to write about this aspect, or has been no stated ‘artistic policy’ radically divergent voices and voicings, location, or activity of encounter – without governing or programming or choosing treatments of material and attitudes to its sounding archly insistent upon the what goes on in the studio. It is available representation and reproduction. This is privilege of process over production, as if in the first instance to members of the certainly one of the most effective uses of this were some elite hive in which genius- English Faculty, but then also to a wider this resource in the delivery of its core bees publicly evacuate the tantrum before public both within the university and a activity: two or more entirely different – the poem is born as mellifluous honey. little and far beyond, as a room which can and, crucially, live– performances of be booked for private work or public exactly the same text can be heard in the Indeed, a number of productions, performance. same place, and there is nothing like the performances, readings and even teaching experience of such a thing, however the events in the studio have drawn the Any studio space is of course really a tool idea strikes you as simplistic or easily epithet ‘elitist’ from some audience- box, and there are manifold applications available via the web. members. The phrases ‘self-indulgent’ to which the uses of the studio can be put. and, perhaps particularly poignant in the The current Judith E. Wilson Poetry As a venue for public cultural events, the English language, ‘pretentious’ have been Fellow, Caroline Bergvall, is already using studio has always had a close relationship heard more than a few times by people the space in a radically enabling way, with the creative force of its function as a leaving the studio. And that is perhaps placing her own work in a context which studio: a place where things are made, yes: because it has been a space in which allows people to consider it in the light of but also the same place where they are people have felt encouraged to be ‘brave’, other practitioners, and her truly generous tried and tested, first. Theatre history has to risk failure, or simply to present style of presentation is keenly attuned to been full of attempts to formulate terms something which is unsure of its sense of the ways in which the studio can be used for such spaces – ‘laboratory’ is a word accomplishment. Or which, perhaps not to make complex and difficult work often used across languages for the place altogether conversely, is outrageously accessible and compelling. in which artists carry out their assured of its own validity. But also, the ‘experiments’. A lot of the work of studio very often affords the chance for Jeremy Hardingham is a performance- theatre-making is not perhaps quite so the audience to encounter and challenge maker & writer. He has been the Judith E. hypothesis-led as this, though, yet there is challenging work directly: to question it, Wilson Drama Studio Manager since 2006. still a requirement for a space in which to critique it, even change it. These things, as explore the anterior of what may well as the dissenting and different voices For more information about the studio ultimately come to be shown before an which can be heard among them, are and its events, see the studio web-pages audience. Often, events at the Judith E. integral to its openness as a space for on the Faculty of English website: Wilson Drama Studio have felt very much genuine dialogue, between performers and www.english.cam.ac.uk like listening in to the processes by which audiences, as also between works and the performance has arisen, rather than their makers. There you will also find a place where attuning to its complete accomplishment. you can contribute your own memories, And actually, this is one of its most All of this of course does not preclude the images, recordings and thoughts to the important features as a space for public fact that the studio has always also been, steadily growing ‘NOW in the past’ dialogue, as a rehearsal room, classroom and remains, a place in which excellent, archive of studio history. and occasional artsy-party room. highly accomplished, complete and cogent

Whether you are entering the room in which the whole of Milton’s Paradise Lost is being read, performed, sung and played by over a hundred people in one day, or whether you are facing the surprising raw hilarity of Sarah Kane’s 4:48 Psychosis played out by crazed clowns wielding semi-frozen chicken, there is something in the incompleteness or even instability that this space affords which facilitates its generous breadth of access.

Crucially in the Faculty of English, the studio provides space for activity whose primary material is not literature, and this vitally enhances the ways in which literature can be encountered and experienced. Students performing a reading of Enemy of the Stars by Wyndham Lewis, Michaelmas 2006

2 Not so. True, in the early days he had Dr Leavis rides again found himself asking, ‘What would Dr Leavis think?’, but his teacher’s legacy Dr Leavis’s legendary bicycle was reunited with its handlebar-basket at the had been the way he encouraged critical international Leavis Conference held at Downing College on 27-28 discrimination – valuation in criticism – September 2012. and the effort this involved to achieve personal inwardness with literature. A writer had to find his own voice, not take over or copy established styles. Agreeing with Leavis or not about particular writers wasn’t the point. His great gift had been to communicate a passion for finding one’s own way of feeling through words. Many speakers emphasised Leavis’s remarkable range as a critic. ‘Cultivate promiscuity’, he told his students! He was among other things a fluent reader of the great Italian poets from Dante to Montale, and of the French classical dramatists, an admirer of Anna Karenina as perhaps the greatest Before: Quentin Blake’s sketch as commissioned After European novel, knowledgeable in the for the 2004 edition of 9 West Road : ‘I used to Greek classics (he had given his last see Dr Leavis arriving to give his morning seminars. He rode a tall gaunt bicycle and was public lecture on Greek tragedy), a able to dismount, park the bike against the wall perceptive critic on Shakespeare, and and mount the steps to his room in one fluent one of the pioneers in the appreciation movement’. of the literary Modernists.

uentin Blake (Downing, 1953), sense of the close imaginative His influence beyond British shores was opening the second day of the collaboration possible between writer brought out by speakers from India and QConference, said the omission and illustrator. FRL had been an China, one of whom, Professor Cao Li, from the first sketch had been an inspiring teacher. Nearly sixty years on, had contributed to the conference oversight. He was pleased to have had he retained the highest regard for him, a reported in last year’s 9 West Road , an occasion to restore the overflowing continued loyalty to Cambridge and a ‘Cambridge English and China’. Leavis basket to its rightful place. In warm and special affection for Downing. had been introduced to China in 1932, entertaining conversation with Bruce when Chang Feng published ‘Three Kinsey (former Fellow and Chaplain of Like Quentin Blake, Howard Jacobson Books by Leavis’, and more recently Downing, now Senior Tutor at Dr (Downing 1961), winner of the 2010 reintroduced through the opened door of Leavis’s old school, the Perse) he said Man Booker Prize, had read English economic reform. His stance on cultural there had been no inconsistency between under Leavis. Now an Honorary Fellow continuity, education and the university, his having been taught by Leavis and his of Downing, he launched the Conference literature and criticism had become career as an illustrator, primarily of with a reading from his new novel Zoo widely influential as China evolved into a children’s books (most famously in Time . The book, he felt, had something consumerist society. The growing collaboration with Roald Dahl) and as of the quality of a ‘Leavisian comedy’: responsiveness to his work there today the creator of hospital art (such as his ‘angry, elegiac and rude’. reflects the transformations of that work for Addenbrooke’s). Text for him society in the postmodern era. inspired image. He had been re-reading He had often been asked whether having Q. D. Leavis’s chapter on the Dickens been taught by Leavis had been It was not only to China that such illustrations, which had renewed his discouraging for an incipient novelist. influence had extended. Professor

Quentin Blake (interviewer Bruce Kinsey, left) Howard Jacobson reading from Zoo Time (left, Howard Jacobson at a book-signing Dr Chris Joyce, Chair, right Dr Cathy Phillips, R. arranged by Heffers J. Owens Fellow in English, Downing)

3 Srinath from Mysore spoke of the Leavis and Levinas. Both had explored English Faculty; at York he revolutionary impact Leavis had had in language, sincerity and disinterestedness. simultaneously observed the his country. His father, C. D. For both, human responsibility was development of student radicalism in a Narasimhaiah, who had been tutored by conditioned by and a condition of a new university and sought to create a Leavis, felt that Leavis’s work had tradition of thought enacted and new élite among his students there. The played an important part in the dynamic embodied in texts – in Leavis’s case lecture was followed by lively discussion evolution of English Studies in India. A literary ones, in Levinas’s the Talmud. – even the occasional heated moment! – firm belief in the life of the text, the For Leavis a crucial term was ‘life’: the as to whether Leavis had sought to direct ‘common pursuit of true judgement’ and individual life known in and through the his students’ political energies at the time a total involvement with it because it 'third realm' of the literary text. For of the succession crisis at Downing in matters as life matters: all these were Levinas the comparable terms are found 1964. reasserted in the Indian context, creating in his distinction between the saying and English departments as nuclei and the said. But Leavis, unlike Levinas, Further papers offered wide-ranging vibrant centres of humanising influence. speaks of the ‘human world’ whose stimulus. Dr Ruiqing Zhang deepened irreducible, non-measurable character is the Chinese perspective; Rohit Dutta Roy But above all the conference – in the created by our sincerity and contributes considered cross-currents in Bengali 50th anniversary year of Leavis’s ‘Two to cultural continuity. literature in a Leavisian context. Edward Cultures’ lecture – underscored his Greenwood’s ‘Leavis, Tolstoy, Lawrence achievement as a thinker: ‘one of the Of compelling interest too was Paul and 'Ultimate Questions"’ grappled with great European minds’ believed Dr Dean’s question, why Leavis published so issues raised by Leavis’s dealing with a Heward Wilkinson, speaking on ‘Leavis little on tragedy. Answers might be work in translation and the way his and the Coleridgean Function in our found in his writings on Lawrence and engagement with it threw light on his Time’. But Leavis had eschewed the Eliot. These address ideas which Leavis position with regard to ultimate possibilities that certain philosophical associated with the tragic, among which questions and the nature of tragedy. He approaches offered. In Nor Shall My the concept of impersonality, used in suggested how Leavis’s admiration of Sword and The Living Principle he had different senses by Lawrence and Eliot, Tolstoy’s novel led him to certain claimed ‘there is only one Culture’. Yet was central. A related question reservations about Lawrence, and drew in doing so he lost touch with the concerned the religious dimension of out the closeness of Leavis to Tolstoy’s ‘importance of antagonistic modes of tragedy, about which there was, again, a Levin. thought’ which, in Mill on Bentham and wide divergence between Lawrence and Coleridge , he had approved. His Eliot. The tensions between their sense of The case for and against Leavis’s later reluctance to articulate philosophically the artist’s responsibility towards his adverse view of Lady Chatterley’s Lover the nature of enactment in literature, the medium and his own creativity were was argued by Malcolm Pittock and Bob equivalent in his thought to the place of arguably fundamental to tensions in Hayward. The first illustrated how, from Imagination in Coleridge and Kant, Leavis's own thinking. his early essay on Lawrence (1930), limited his contribution to the dialectic. Leavis’s estimate of his achievement It remained nevertheless a remarkable John Foster from the Department of steadily increased. But as his valuation one. Politics and Philosophy at Lancaster of Lawrence’s work as a whole went up, presented Leavis as fighter, one who so his estimate of Lawrence’s now most Bernard Harrison (Emeritus Professor of might have espoused contemporary famous novel went down, reaching its Philosophy at the Universities of Utah ecological concerns. Leavis had insisted nadir when he refused to testify at the so- and Sussex), in a lecture sponsored by that, looking ahead, ‘mankind ... will called ‘Trial Of Lady Chatterley ’ in the British Wittgenstein Society, argued need to be in full intelligent possession of 1960. The speaker agreed with that later that Leavis had not recognised affinities its full humanity’. What could represent estimate, but wondered whether Leavis’s between his own thought and the later a contemporary form of this project otherwise almost unqualified praise of Wittgenstein’s. Wittgenstein was anti- now? The question had a vital urgency Lawrence was critically tenable. He Cartesian and anti-Lockeian in ways since the drives of ‘technologico- argued that it was not and that Lady that not only mirrored Leavis’s distrust Benthamite’ civilisation had brought us Chatterley took to an extreme the of Locke and Descartes, but might have to the verge of ecological disaster. The weaknesses in Lawrence’s other works. advanced his efforts to argue against international green movement had failed Contrariwise, Bob Hayward offered a them. Like Wittgenstein, Leavis was to understand its own emphasis on living close examination of Leavis’s grounds for committed to the idea of ‘the life of diversity and was bound up in Snow-like calling it a ‘bad novel’ as set out in ‘The language’: language as a living enterprise ‘social hope’, preventing it from Orthodoxy of Enlightenment’ (in Anna involved in the constitution of ‘human acknowledging the real situation. Leavis’s Karenina, and Other Essays ). An worlds’. What a writer ‘means’ by a advocacy and practice remained directly important question was whether word (such as ‘life’) is not something we relevant. Lawrence’s biography or the novel itself have to be taught in order to read him or supported this diagnosis. He argued that her but something we learn through that From Cambridge’s Faculty of Human, they did not. Leavis’s estimate was reading . The thought of great creative Social and Political Science Dr David internally inconsistent; his much earlier writers and critics is exemplified through Fowler explored Leavis’s position in appraisal of the novel had been the juster language in the fullness of its powers relation to the student revolts of the ’60s and more balanced. and potentialities. and ’70s, arguing that he had been a ‘mentor’ to both radical students and From an American perspective, Professor Professor Laurence Steven from Ontario radical dons. At Cambridge, Leavis had Philip Bufithis spoke of the limitations of suggested a number of affinities between generated student revolt inside the literary study in the United States, where

4 teachers analysed and interpreted texts but seldom went on to evaluate them New Research and Teaching in in sustained literary critical assessments. American students were trained to be exegetes, not critics. the Faculty of English Nonetheless, Leavis was too important not to have a presence in the American Several of our new teaching appointees have kindly offered short academy. His paper attempted to descriptions of their interests. gauge this presence during the height of his reputation and gave an account Dr Kasia Boddy I’m interested in the imaginative of his developing significance for the resources offered by leisure activities author himself. uch of my teaching and such as sport and horticulture, which research is on American fiction have become ubiquitous to the point of Professor Jan Montefiore explained and, over the years, I’ve found saturation in modern life, but which for why, following her initial researches, M myself attracted to its extremes – to the the most part enter only obliquely into including her interview with Kate short story, on the one hand, and, on the literature, almost without full Varney, the Leavises’ daughter, she had other, to very long novels. I’ve just acknowledgement from the writer. My abandoned her project to write a started writing a book about the Great topic in Boxing: A Cultural History biography of Q. D. Leavis. She would American Novel or G.A.N. (as Henry (2008) and in the forthcoming Geranium have had to work entirely from James dubbed it). The notion of the (2013) is the often incidental materials in the public domain, which G.A.N. was first formulated in 1868 by representation in literature of events, were scanty; Robin Leavis, his parents’ a former Union army officer called John activities and objects whose meaning and literary executor, was unwilling to W. De Forest, as an example of the kind value is historically contingent. If release crucial papers, including their of cultural work necessary for geraniums had not been imported en voluminous correspondence; and Reconstruction after the Civil War. What masse from colonial southern Africa, publishing the story of her life could be he wanted was a novel of ‘national Jane Austen would have had one less painful for surviving relatives and close breadth’, one that would offer a portrait way in which to let it be known that friends. An early conference on QDL’s of American society comparable to the Fanny Price, in retiring to her room to work was proposed. European tableaux of Balzac and tend her own specimens, has become Thackeray. More specifically, he felt that subtly complicit in the colonialist Proceedings were brought to an the G.A.N. should represent an ‘eager appropriations which created the adventurous conclusion by Dr Steven and laborious people, which takes so institution of Mansfield Park. If Cranfield. What continuing value is many newspapers, builds so many Dubliners had not been prone to reflect there in the kinds of critical arguments railroads, does the most business on a on the several celebrated boxing-matches Leavis urged upon us, Dr Cranfield given capital, wages the biggest war in in which a nimble Irish (or honorary asked, notably about how to ‘read’ proportion to its population, believes in Irish) fighter had taken on a hefty Briton, human creativity? One answer might the physically impossible and does some James Joyce would have one less way in lie in our seeing Leavis in relation to of it’. A super-sized book, then, for a which to let it be known that Ulysses is the work of the film director Stanley super-sized people. not quite as pacifist as it is often thought Kubrick (1928-99). Their oeuvres , to be. My method in these books while conceived independently in Since the 1860s, the G.A.N. has retained involves the establishment of precise different media, could be seen to share a solid if uneasy place in American contexts for a wide range of socio-artistic and philosophic concerns: literary culture. Parodied almost as soon representations, in literature and other how to affirm the complex nature of as it was conceived, a tribute as emphatic art-forms and media. I had not expected human creativity, with its fragile sense as it is ambiguous, the big state-of-the- that a cultural history of boxing and a of hope in the face of technologically nation novel remains the bench-mark for cultural history of the geranium would enhanced destructiveness. In particular, literary ambition, prestige and sales. I each independently implicate both Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey want to explore the ambitions and habits famous Eliots (British and American, (1968) provided an illuminating foil to of mind which brought the idea into female and male, novelist and poet). some of Leavis’s ideas, and vice versa: being, and have kept it going, in wave about social learning, the dynamics of after wave, ever since. As well as creativity and the nature of human considering what the G.A.N. was (and Professor Steven Connor intelligence. is), I also want to ask ‘ Why the Great American Novel?’ Exactly what needs The central focus of my interest is in Rare recordings of Leavis in discussion (social, political, aesthetic, commercial) nineteenth- and twentieth-century and reading out poetry were heard at does the enterprise serve? Exactly what literature, with a particular interest in various intervals. purposes might its realisation be the work of Dickens, Joyce and Beckett, expected to fulfil, that so many writers to all of whom I have repeatedly For details of Leavis-related events should have put so much effort into returned. But in the last decade or so, I planned for the 50th anniversary, in realising it? have made literary writing the 2013, of the founding of the University provocation for a series of books which I of York, and in China, please contact Looking beyond American fiction, I also see as instalments in a history of the the Chair of the Leavis Society, Dr work on the cultural and literary history material imagination – the way in which Chris Joyce at of what might be thought of as certain kinds of material object are [email protected]. unacknowledged tropes. In particular, imagined, and the ways in which

5 imagination has materialised itself. the philosopher and historian of science practices and tastes. In this period, this These books include Dumbstruck: A Michel Serres, a man who has published effectively means I spend a great deal Cultural History of Ventriloquism forty books, and, despite being in his of time working on religious tracts, (2000), The Book of Skin (2003), Fly early 80s, shows no sign of leaving off. but these speak to political and (2006), The Matter of Air: Science and Serres has provided the intellectual pastoral concerns too and are far from Art of the Ethereal (2010) and, most framework for a number of my books – dry or one-dimensional. Indeed, my recently, Paraphernalia: The Curious most especially The Book of Skin and current work focuses on controversial Lives of Magical Things (2011) and A The Matter of Air – and I would like to religious tracts and ways in which Philosophy of Sport (2011). I am make his work accessible to many more printers and writers might try to planning a sequel to Paraphernalia scholars and students than is currently negotiate restrictions on their called Matters of Concern . Where the case, while also settling some of my publication and circulation. Paraphernalia dealt with specific, if own intellectual accounts with it. My generic objects, this book would deal aim is to write a book that considers the I particularly enjoy challenging the ways with blurrier, more diffuse kinds of stuff, full range of Serres’s preoccupations – in which we read apparently simple or states of matter, like froth, glue, mud, identity, technology, ecology, music, texts. This is well illustrated in my wax and soap, aiming to show the narrative, time, violence, the senses – forthcoming article on ‘Marketing the different ways in which, in each while also conveying something of the Shrine: Printed Pilgrimage Souvenirs, substance, the material and the intricate way in which his themes are Guides and Advertising’ which will be imaginary converge. interlaced. published in the Journal of the Early Book Society . In it, I look at three I retain the interest in the voice that was The most substantial research and pamphlets – The Life of St Joseph of the prompt for my book Dumbstruck , thinking that I will be beginning at Arimathea, The Shrine at Walsingham and have just completed a book called Cambridge will be in the relations and Diverse Miracles in Hailes – that Broken Voices , which will appear next between writing and the imagination of have been treated as if they were just year. This is really a ventilation of a number. There is an ingrained saints’ lives, and argue that in fact these remark of Aristotle’s that has nagged at assumption that art and literature stands functioned as guides for visiting me ever since I encountered it, that, opposed to the kinds of quantitative or pilgrims, souvenirs for those returning while what we call a voice is the sound calculative rationality that have become and as advertising for those considering of ‘something that has soul in it’, not all ever more important over the last two the journey. Although they may have of the sounds that are in the voice are centuries. My feeling is that, while been read as part of a reader’s themselves possessed of soul – Aristotle’s literature certainly found itself officially devotions, they are actually very example is a cough. My book is about opposed to the order of number, it also pragmatic texts. For example, the writer this area of what might be called found itself entering into it. It is this of The Shrine at Walsingham addresses imaginary phonetics: it is a book about intimate participation of number in the reader as though they stood in front the life of the noises that inhabit the writing and writing in number, from the of, or inside, the chapel itself. There are voice, such as sobbing, growling, middle of the nineteenth century insistent references to the building as grunting, hissing, clicking, tutting and onwards, that I aim to lay out. We have ‘this chapell’ and ‘here’, as well as buzzing. It operates, not in the realm of lived too long and too complacently commands to ‘se’ or ‘beholde and se’, phonetics proper but in a sort of with the assumption that number is which emphasise its physical closeness phonophenomenology, or funnyfarm simply inimical to literary writing; I to the reader. The reader is also phonetics – in the daft yet deep ideas want to show that there is a poetics of addressed as one of those that ‘visyte that many people, many of them literary number, which is an important thys hir [Our Lady’s] habytacle’ and the writers, cling to about the specific, component of the imaginative, text ends with a prayer for those that apparently indwelling powers of certain emotional and philosophical adjustment ‘deuoutly visyte in this place’. Although sounds. to counting, quantity and calculation the pamphlet might serve a reader that humans have undergone in the last undertaking an imaginary pilgrimage, I have a strong and continuing interest two centuries. beholding the site in their mind’s eye, it in the relation between technology, seems clear that its initial function was media and the senses, especially in as a more prosaic guide to those visiting relation to sound, questions which Dr Alex da Costa the shrine. have come together in some of the writing I have done on, and for radio. Before I came to Cambridge, I was at My interest in such less ‘literary’ texts At the same time, I look forward to Oxford as a Fixed-Term Fellow at St has influenced the way I teach medieval contributing to the new configurations Hilda’s College, and before that as a literature. So while I love introducing of research across the Faculty, Research Fellow and Tutor at Keble students to the complexities of Chaucer especially in the newly-established College. and helping them to hone their close- Literature-Technology-Media hub, for reading skills on Piers Plowman , I also which I hope to broach some new lines My research focuses on incunabula encourage them to see the influence of of thinking about technological and early printed books meant for an sermons, church wall paintings and less objects and about the body and English readership in the late fifteenth textual forms of culture in the texts they technology, and in the Performance and early sixteenth centuries. I’m study. As such, I’m thrilled to have hub. particularly interested in cheaper joined a Faculty that so values the books, which might sell for as little as relationship between literary and visual Since the middle 1990s, I have been 1d., and what they suggest about less culture that it created the Medieval writing at intervals about the work of learned and more ‘popular’ reading Imaginations website!

6 Dr Malachi McIntosh received in Europe, in order to enduring interest in the concept of understand how writers’ positioning as evidence – how it works in the Samuel Selvon’s 1956 novel The Lonely emigrants affected both the content and courtroom, and how its shape Londoners famously ends with its main reception of their texts and their later predetermines its reception by different character, Moses Aloetta, standing on esteem. Toward the end of that project audiences. My first book, Testimony and the banks of the Thames and staring into in 2010, I began a sustained analysis of Advocacy in Victorian Law, Literature, London’s streets. With a gaze made Samuel Selvon – a seminal figure in the and Theology , published by Cambridge Olympian, Moses tracks ‘the black faces development of Anglophone Caribbean University Press in 2000, paid attention bobbing up and down’ in the crowds, literature, whose oeuvre has been to individual voice, and the ways in watches ‘everybody hustling along the repeatedly forced down narrow which the evidentiary status of a story Strand’ and understands that ‘on interpretative channels and whose most changes if it is narrated in the first surface, things don’t look so bad, but challenging novels have been lost to even person (by a layman) or the third-person when you go down a little’ and penetrate Caribbean-centred literary critics. (by a professional representative). My the facades of the passersby, ‘you bounce Through Selvon I developed a desire to second book, Atonement and Self- up a kind of misery and pathos and a learn more about writing from his home Sacrifice in Nineteenth-Century frightening – what?’. Selvon’s novel, a colony, now country, of Trinidad and Narrative , published by Cambridge largely humorous take on the trials and Tobago – a burgeoning body of work University Press in June 2012, takes as challenges faced by the post-World War that has primarily been read for what it its point of departure this tension II Caribbean migrants to Britain, is represents about the state of the between first and third-person ways of centrally focused on revealing the lives Caribbean, rather than the state of the knowing, and uses the tropes of sacrifice underneath the strained expressions of culturally distinct, singularly eclectic and substitution to investigate the extent emigrated West Indians, on showing the polity from which it grows. Most to which the ‘one’ might ‘stand for’ the day-to-day of the present but recently, and through my abiding ‘many’ in various strands of Victorian misrepresented black faces in the city’s fixation on depictions of immigration, I public discourse – notably in arguments crowded streets. have begun study of the group of texts about the extension of the franchise, the thus far dubbed ‘Black British’ and the impact of the Crimean War, and the Londoners was one of the first ideas of biological/biographical meaning of the doctrine of the Caribbean novels I had ever read. I authenticity upon which their category Atonement in the Established Church. cracked it open along with several others sits. In asking how the innocent might (or in a frenzy of acquisition at age 22, might not) be able to atone for the guilt while I was in the midst of an MA in I always find it hard to summarise my of the many, this book puts pressure on Comparative Literature at King’s College research interests; when asked I tend to our understanding of guilt and London. Just as the text itself was pause, unhinge my jaw, and then, after a innocence, and how these moral states concerned with revealing the lives of few false starts, unravel some might be formulated (or complicated) by those hidden in plain sight, for me, the meanderings on ‘My work to date…’. legal and literary language. novel itself was an example of what it ‘Postcolonial’, ‘Caribbean’ and now portrayed: The Lonely Londoners , like ‘World’ literature are all matrices within This year I am on leave, having been other works by Caribbean writers, which my interests fit but none of them awarded a Leverhulme Research existed but didn’t within the field of quite contains all of the places my Fellowship to complete a book on English Literature. It was literature, studies have gone or where I would like Victorian sacred drama and dramatic written in English, that reflected on a them to take me. I’m fascinated by the poetry. The performance of scriptural seminal moment in Britain’s history, but ways that canons are formed and by all drama was prohibited in the period by it had quite decisively escaped any the things that are lost in that taxonomic censorship (in the form of eighteenth- reference at any stage of my studies; my process. I’m continually drawn to works and nineteenth-century legislation, as first reading a result of my own search that issue from the Caribbean and its well as custom and practice stretching to learn more of this odd thing called singular combination of peoples and back to the Elizabethan period), but, by ‘Caribbean Literature’ that I thought I cultural practices. And, perhaps most the 1820s, the increasing popularity of had, Columbus-like, just discovered. importantly, I’m captivated by writing antiquarianism, the possibility of that describes the elided in new ways; Catholic Emancipation and, in the The experience of burrowing into the that violates convention and tries to Established Church, the rise of huge stock of writing from the explore, if not just grasp, Selvon’s ‘kind Tractarianism, brought religious drama Anglophone and Francophone of misery and pathos’ and the and ritual procession back to the Caribbean during my first postgraduate underpinning, hidden, ‘frightening – forefront of theological controversy. year sketched an agenda for all of my what?’. study in the years that would follow. The texts of the medieval mystery plays Namely, a desire to understand what has were recovered and published by been present but neglected in Dr Jan Schramm scholars (including the radical William contemporary literary studies has guided Hone), and authors from Byron to my research since that early encounter. My particular interests lie at the Tennyson turned their attention to My PhD thesis carried forward my intersection of law, literature and Biblical or religious themes in the interest in understanding the roles theology in the long nineteenth century. dramatic genre. But even as (the largely played by Caribbean authors in shaping Before I did my PhD in English literature Catholic) enthusiasm for religious drama the traditions that have largely forgotten here in Cambridge, I had spent several became more widespread, popular them; it sought to analyse how World years working as a lawyer in Australia, protest and Chartist unrest ensured that War II-era Caribbean writing was and this experience left me with an the theatre remained suspect, and the

7 Examiner of Plays exercised caution in taking on the role of Senior Secretary suppressing or bowdlerizing plays with Appointments (Academic Support) looking after the the potential to excite sedition. ASNC Tripos and supporting various Consequently, scriptural themes were academic activities in English. Lisa Gold often explored in drama that was 2012 is our new Senior Secretary (External written to be read rather than Affairs) responsible, amongst other performed. My research has two distinct Professor Steve Connor of Birkbeck things, for events, academic visitors, lines of enquiry – firstly, to interrogate College, London, was elected to the outreach and alumni relations. the meaning of bodily performance and Grace 2 Chair of English formerly held incarnational art, and to ask how the by Professor Jacobus. He and all those RETIREMENTS knowledge that the Victorians gained listed below (except where noted) took from reading a play differed from the up their posts in Michaelmas Term Professors Heather Glen and Stephen experience of seeing it enacted. And 2012. Heath . secondly, I want to think about the pressures of self-censorship, and how Dr Michael Hurley was appointed to a Dr Eric Griffiths has taken early sacred themes might be adapted to Lectureship in nineteenth-century retirement. evade the censors. Such was the impact literature, with an associated Fellowship of the licensing laws that this study will at St Catharine’s College. be a history of fugitive presences and the recovery of traces – of pondering Dr Kasia Boddy was appointed to a Events 2012/13 whether the translation of sacred Lectureship in American literature, with material into something more secular in an associated Fellowship at Fitzwilliam Festival of Ideas order to escape the censors is in fact a College. survival or an evacuation of religious 25 October Night Thoughts and Waking meaning. Dreams (Judith E. Wilson Dr Alex da Costa was appointed to a Drama Studio) Lectureship in medieval literature For the last twelve years, I have been a (starting January 2013); she will hold Fellow and College Teaching Officer at 26 October Taking Pity on Things the Valerie Eliot Fellowship at Newnham (GR06/07) Trinity Hall, and for some of that time I College. have been a Newton Trust Lecturer in Victorian Literature here in the Faculty. 27 October Poetry Writing Workshop Dr Malachi Macintosh was appointed (Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio) I am very much looking forward to to a Lectureship in Post-colonial and greater involvement in Faculty teaching Related Literature (Caribbean in the years ahead. 27 October, How To Read (GR06/07) literature), from 1 September 2012. 30 October, 2 November Dr Jan Schramm was appointed to a Lectureship in nineteenth-century 29 October Do I Wake or Sleep (GR06/07) literature, taking up her Faculty duties after completing her Leverhulme 31 October Ghosts and Brains in Macbeth Research Fellowship. (GR06/07)

Dr Nicky Zeeman was appointed to a 1 November Perfume and Poetry Lectureship in medieval literature. 3 November New Cambridge Writers Dr James Riley was appointed to a Temporary Lectureship to cover for Dr Macfarlane while on research leave. Other events 30 October Book Launch and Poetry Dr Oliver Ross was appointed as a Reading: Bones Will Crow: Teaching Associate, to cover for 15 Contemporary Burmese Dr Gopal while she is on research leave. Poets Caroline Bergvall was appointed to the Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellowship 14 November The T.S. Eliot Lecture: The Long from 15 September 2012. Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: T.S. Eliot and Modern Poetry , Dr Paul Gazzoli and Dr Eva Urban given by Dr Jeremy Noel-Tod were appointed to British Academy (University of East Anglia) Postdoctoral Fellowships.

Dr Rory Naismith was appointed to a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship.

We were also delighted to welcome two new members of the administrative staff during the year. Charlotte Watkinson is