The Forty-Fourth
Wordsworth Summer Conference
3 – 13 August, 2015
At Rydal Hall
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The Trustees gratefully acknowledge a generous endowment towards bursaries from the late Ena Wordsworth. Other bursaries are funded by anonymous donors or by the Charity itself.
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regular events
Early Morning walks: 07.15 (07.00 on sedentary days) Breakfast: 08.15 (earlier on changeover day) Coffee: 10.30 – 11.00 Tea: 16.15 – 17.00 (when applicable) Dinner: 19.00
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The Wordsworth Conference Foundation
Summer Conference Director Nicholas Roe Foundation Chairman Richard Gravil Foundation Secretary and Conference Administrator Stacey McDowell Treasurer Gregory Leadbetter
Trustees Gordon Bottomley Frederick Burwick David Chandler Richard Gravil Anthony Harding Felicity James Claire Lamont Greg Leadbetter Stacey McDowell Michael O’Neill Nicholas Roe Christopher Simons
The Wordsworth Conference Foundation is a Company Limited by Guarantee, Registered in England and Wales Company No. 6556368 Registered Charity No. 1124319 2
WORDSWORTH SUMMER CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
EVENTS MAY BE CHANGED WITHOUT NOTICE
(leisure events, timings and destinations are especially subject to change)
Part 1: 3–8 August
Colour Coding: Keynote lectures Research Papers Leisure Events Foundation Events Notices
Monday 3 August
1425 Our transfer bus from Oxenholme Railway Station to Rydal is timed to meet these trains: Euston to Oxenholme 11.30 – 14.08 [direct] Manchester Airport 12.00 – 13.27 [direct] Glasgow Central 12 40 – 14.22 [direct] Glasgow Airport 11.47 – 14.22 [2 changes] 1600 Tea [1600 – 1700] 1630 Wordsworth Conference Foundation –Trustees’ Meeting Part 1: 1630-1800 1800 Reception (on the Rydal Hall Terrace if fine) 1900 Dinner 2045 Reception at the Wordsworth Museum and Gallery & Dove Cottage by Candlelight
Tuesday 4 August
0715 Early Morning Walk 0915 Lecture 1 – Simon Bainbridge (Lancaster University): Wordsworth, War, and Waterloo 1100 Paper 1 – Paul Cheshire – John Cowper Powys and Wordsworth’s ‘cerebral mystical passion for young women’ 1145 Paper 2 – Dan Eltringham (Birkbeck) – Enclosure, Scarcity and Sustainability in Wordsworth’s Cumbria 1245 A Walk – Nab Scar and Lord Crag continuing to Great Rigg and [possibly] Fairfield 1245 B+ Walk – Nab Scar and Lord Crag descending to Alcock Tarn and the Coffin Path 1245 B Walk – The Rydal Cave, Loughrigg Terrace, Loughrigg Tarn, and Fox Ghyll 1715 Paper 3 – Bruce Graver (Providence) – Neoclassical Wordsworth 1800 Paper 4 – Charity Ketz (UC at Berkeley) – Duration and Suspense in Wordsworth’s ‘Books’ 2030 Lecture 2 – Sarah Wootton (Durham University): Afterlives of the Byronic Hero in Nineteenth- Century Fiction and on Film
Wednesday 5 August
0715 Early Morning Walk 0915 Lecture 3 – Philip Shaw (Leicester University): Wordsworth, Waterloo and Sacrifice 1100 Paper 5 – Stacey McDowell (St John’s, Cambridge) – Reading Together Apart 1145 Paper 6 – Kimiyo Ogawa (Sophia University) – ‘Roaming fancy’: Gothic Force and imagination in Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Keats’s ‘Isabella’ 1245 A Walk –The Tilberthwaite Fells 1300 C Excursion – Furness Abbey 2030 Lecture 4 – Sonia Hofkosh (Tufts): Double Touch: The Poetics of Drawing in STC’s Notebooks
Thursday 6 August
0715 Early Morning Walk 0915 Lecture 5 – Lucy Newlyn (St Edmund Hall, Oxford): The Poetics of Hospitality 1100 Paper 7 – James Castell (Cardiff) – Ontology and politics in ‘Frost at Midnight’ 1145 Paper 8 – Tim Fulford (De Montfort) – Patrons and Stewards: Wordsworth’s Coleorton Inscriptions and the Politics of Landscape 3
1245 A Walk – Pavey Ark and the Langdale Pikes (strictly for those who have completed a prior A walk) 1300 C Excursion – a private tour of Naworth Castle with Lady Susan Howard 2030 Lecture 6 – Kaz Oishi (Tokyo University): Coleridge and Philanthropy in the 1810s: Lay Sermons Revisited
Friday 7 August – first sedentary day
0700 Earlier Morning Walk 0915 Lecture 7 – Andrew Bennett (Bristol University): ‘Here, ‘tis here / Here’: Wordsworth in the Here and Now 1100 Paper 9 – Anna Camilleri (Christ Church, Oxford) – Lyrical Epic and Epical Lyric: The Prelude and Don Juan 1145 Paper 10 – Elsa Hammond (Bristol) – Coleridge’s ‘baby pangs’ 1230 Lunch interval 1300 A picturesque tour of Rydal (‘Nab Well’, the woodland sculptures, the chestnut tree, the grotto and lower fall, and the formal garden, Dora’s Field) 1500 Paper 11 – Judyta Frodyma (St Catherine’s College, Oxford)– Transatlantic Wildness: Considerations of ‘Westward’ in Wordsworth and Thoreau 1545 Paper 12 – Tim Sommer (Heidelberg) – American Transcendentalism and Wordsworth’s Transnational Uses 1630 Tea interval 1715 Paper 13 – Jolene Mathieson (Hamburg) – William Wordsworth, Cognitive Ecology and the Performance of Nature 1800 Paper 14 – Julia S. Carlson (Cincinnati) – Tangible Print and Wordsworthian Tact 2030 A Poetry Reading by Lucy Newlyn 2115 An auction of books for Bursary Funds (you are invited to bring good quality unwanted items for this purpose)
Saturday 8 August: Arrivals and Departures
Today’s events, before 1800, are for those attending both parts of the conference. It is not possible to provide transfers from or to Oxenholme or Windermere on this day: local buses or shared taxis are advised.
This programme includes a hyperlink to the bus timetable (page 6).
If there are spare seats, participants registered for only Part 1 or Part 2 may join one of the all-day events on payment of £20.00 (the excursion) or £10 (the walk), but it is unlikely to be possible to spend an extra night at Rydal Hall to facilitate this.
0730 Breakfast and Part 1 checkout 0830 All-day Walk: The Coledale Round 0830 All-day Excursion: Sir Walter Scott’s Abbotsford
Part 2: 8–13 August
Saturday 8 August
1800 A very brief briefing in the ‘Drawing Room’ for New Arrivals 1815 A reception and book launch at Rydal Mount 1930 Dinner 2100 Lecture 8 – Nicholas Roe (St Andrews): Mr Keats
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Sunday 9 August – second sedentary day
0700 Earlier Morning Walk 0915 Lecture 9 – Tom Owens (Churchill College, Cambridge): Wordsworth’s Orbicular Poetics 1100 Paper 15 – Saeko Yoshikawa (Kobe City University) – Wordsworth and the Wars – Patriotism and Preservation 1145 Paper 16 – Anna Fleming (Leeds) – Wordsworth’s Creative Ecotone: Navigating Community Boundaries and Tension in the Vagrant Poems 1245 A Perambulation of Rydal by the Lake Path and the Coffin Path 1500 Paper 17 – Janine Utell (Widener) – ‘I did my work like a man’: Leslie Stephen, Mountaineering, and Masculinity 1545 Paper 18 – Pamela Buck (Sacred Heart) – Prints, Panoramas, and Picturesque Travel in Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journal of a Tour on the Continent 1630 Wordsworth Conference Foundation AGM (Members and Friends) 1730 Paper 19 – John Hartley (Open University) – ‘Romance Mania’ and John Stagg’s Minstrel of the North 1815 Paper 20 – Rachel Nisbet (Lausanne) – Wordsworth’s Poetic Mediation of Nature’s Still Small Voices 1900 Dinner 2030 Lecture 10 – John Bugg (Fordham University): Cobbett’s Country Peace
Monday 10 August
0715 Early Morning Walk 0915 Lecture 11 – Susan Wolfson (Princeton University): What’s in a Name? 1100 Paper 21 – Oliver Clarkson (University College, Oxford) – Wordsworth and What Can’t be Said 1145 Paper 22 – Kate Pfeffer (Trinity College, Cambridge) – Lyrical Babble 1245 A Walk – Helm Crag 1300 C Excursion – The Jerwood Centre : hosted by Jeff Cowton, Curator 1715 Paper 23 – Heather Stone (Brasenose, Oxford) – Coleridge and Lamb: reading round the margins 1800 Paper 24 – Natsuko Hirakura (Waseda) – The Other Wollstonecraft Girl: Fanny Imlay in the Works of Mary Shelley 2030 Paper 25 – Julia Tejblum (Harvard) – Wordsworth and the Relief of Central Switzerland 2115 Paper 26 – Matthew Ward (St Andrews) – Wordsworth and Glee
Tuesday 11 August
0715 Early Morning Walk 0915 Lecture 12 – Anthony Harding (Saskatchewan): Dissent and the National Narrative: Williams, Hays, Thelwall 1100 Paper 27 – Brandon Chao-Chi Yen (Queens’ College, Cambridge) – The Political Iconography of Cottages in The Excursion 1145 Paper 28 – Alexandra Paterson (Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) – ‘I never could trace…’: Geology and Poetic Process in Charlotte Smith’s ‘Beachy Head’ 1245 A Walk – Red Screes 1300 C Excursion – Wordsworth House, Cockermouth & Castlerigg Stone Circle 2030 Paper 29 – Hiroki Iwamoto (Waseda) – Endymion and Keats’s Aesthetic of Passivity 2115 Paper 30 – Paul Whickman (Derby) – Poet as Sage, Sage as Poet: Aesthetics and Epistemology in Shelley’s ‘Mont Blanc’ and ‘Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’
Wednesday 12 August
0715 Early Morning Walk 0915 Lecture 13 – Richard Lansdown (James Cook University): A Marginal Interest? Byron and the Fine Arts 1100 Paper 31 – Jessica Fay (Bristol) – Wordsworth’s Creation of Taste 1145 Paper 32 – Tom Clucas (Justus-Liebig University) – ‘There is an Eminence’: The Poet as Parley-Hill 1245 A Walk – Blencathra by Hall’s Fell Edge (participants must have completed a prior A–walk) 1300 C Excursion – Levens Hall 2030 A Reading Party on the shore of Rydal Water (weather permitting) 5
Thursday 13 August
0815 Breakfast 0945 Transport to Oxenholme Railway Station for trains as follows: to Euston 11.23 – 14.13 (direct) to Manchester Airport 11.13 – 13.15 (direct) to Glasgow Central 11.08 – 13.01 (direct) to Glasgow Airport 11.08 – 13.51 (2 changes) Our bus transfers must be pre-booked by 15 July 0900 Wordsworth Conference Foundation - Trustees Meeting: part 2 [09.45–10.30]
Bursary Awards, 2015
Ena Wordsworth Bursaries
Daniel Eltringham (Birkbeck) Judyta Frodyma (St Catherine’s College, Oxford) Emma Hammack (Boston College) Elsa Hammond (Bristol) Charity Ketz (California, at Berkeley) Alexandra Paterson (Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Richard Wordsworth Bursaries
Tim Sommer (Heidelberg) Sarah Storti (Virginia) Julia Tejblum (Harvard) Matthew Ward (St Andrews) Brandon Chao-Chi Yen (Queens' College, Cambridge)
Papers Taken as Read (These will be in a folder in the Bishop’s Room for participants to read)
Emma Hammack (Boston College) ‘Exploiting the Margin; Liminality in the Miscellaneous Sonnets of 1815’
Asya Rogova (St. Petersburg State University) ‘Napoleon and Wellington portrayed by Haydon and Wordsworth 20 Years After the Battle of Waterloo’
Notes to Participants
TRAVEL To research train connections we suggest: http://www.virgintrains.co.uk/ http://www.thetrainline.com/buytickets/? We arrange one transfer bus from Oxenholme railway station at the start of the conference, and one at the end, which you must pre-book by 15 July. At other times there are hourly buses from Windermere and Kendal. The bus timetable (route 555) is available here
CHECK-IN and CHECKOUT: check in on both arrival dates is from 1500. Check out is 10.00 a.m.
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CHILDREN
There are no child-minding facilities and parents are responsible for the supervision of children at all times. BOOTS
Please see our Notes on Walks and Excursions for a description of the kind of mountain boots and clothing required for all A-walks and advised for all other walks. Low-cut approach shoes or all-terrain shoes are shoes, not boots, whatever their soles, and would invalidate our risk assessment policy if worn on fell-walks. There are numerous shops for outdoor clothing and boots, in both Grasmere and Ambleside.
CASH PAYMENTS
You are responsible for settling you own bar bill and returning your room key on departure and you may use credit cards for this purpose. Unfortunately we cannot accept credit cards, foreign currency, foreign cheques, or travellers’ cheques for sums due to the Wordsworth Conference Foundation, so please have cash, in sterling, available on arrival for any amounts for which you may not have pre-paid.
GRATUITIES
We collect gratuities for Rydal Hall staff and bus drivers towards the end of Part 1 and Part 2 of the conference, which means that you may want to ensure that you have sufficient cash to meet this eventuality! We usually suggest about £30 for those staying ten nights.
BANKS/POST OFFICE/SHOPS
There are no banks or ATMs at Rydal or in Grasmere. Ambleside, accessible from Rydal Hall by car, by bus or on foot, has several banks and ATMs, a chemist, numerous shops, and a main post office in the central square.
CONFERENCE TIMINGS
Lecture slots are 1 hr 15 minutes: questions should not continue after 10.30 a.m. or 9.45 pm. Panels with two papers last 1 hr 30 minutes and the changeover normally takes place between 40 and 45 minutes into the session.
PRINTING
The conference organizers have no printing facilities at Rydal Hall, and Rydal Hall staff must not be asked to undertake photocopying: if you need a handout please bring sufficient copies with you (50 should normally suffice).
TELEPHONY and PROJECTION
Rydal is a hamlet; many mobile phones do not work in mountainous districts; while there is wireless internet access in the Rydal Hall lobby it cannot handle a great deal of traffic; so please enjoy the absence of metropolitan facilities!
Our own video projector, which has a remote, operates from a datastick without a computer provided that powerpoint presentations are converted to a slide show program using Epson easymp-slide-converter. The Rydal Hall projector requires connection to a computer but does not have a remote.
THE JERWOOD CENTRE
Participants are made welcome at the Jerwood Centre for research purposes, during or (preferably) before and after the conference, but space is limited and it takes time to access unique materials. If you would like to use the Jerwood centre please contact Jeff Cowton [email: [email protected]] well before the event, indicating what you would like to use and when.
YOUR ADDRESS DURING THE CONFERENCE
Rydal Hall, Rydal, Ambleside, Cumbria LA22 9LX. 7
The Excursions
Wednesday 5 August: Furness Abbey
Setting for one of the most complex of the WW’s ‘spots of time’, Furness Abbey was founded in 1123 and built for the Order of Savigny. It passed in 1147 to the Cistercians, who gradually enlarged and rebuilt the original church. Most of the current ruins date from the 12th and 13th centuries. By the 15th century, it had become the second richest and most powerful – as well as one of the grandest – Cistercian Abbeys in England. The monks of the abbey were large landowners, influencing the economy of much of Cumbria, and the most powerful body in what was then a remote border territory.
Thursday 6 August: A Private visit to Naworth Castle [a conference debut]
Home of the Dacres and the Howards since the 13th Century, Naworth Castle is situated ten miles from the Scottish Border: its resident Sheriffs of Cumberland hanged many a Scots reiver in the time of Wordsworth’s The Borderers. In the reign of Henry III the Dacres were prominent as Sheriffs of Cumberland and Yorkshire, while the Howards still hold the Dukedom of Norfolk and Earldom of Arundel. Still a private home, but available by special arrangement, Naworth has remarkable Pre-Raphaelite interiors, and is set in a 2,000 acre estate with a magnificent seventeenth century walled garden.
Saturday 8 August: Scott’s Abbotsford
Abbotsford was always a major attraction in the first three decades of the conference and has recently been hugely improved. As Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire, Scott spent legal terms in Edinburgh and legal vacations in the country. In 1811 he bought his own ‘mountain farm’, as he described it, ‘on a bare haugh and bleak bank by the side of the Tweed’. There was no grand plan for the creation of Abbotsford. ‘Rambling’, ‘whimsical’ and ‘picturesque’ were the expressions he used at different times to describe it. The mansion seen today was built in phases between 1817 and the 1850s.
Monday 10 August – The Jerwood Centre
Jeff Cowton : an Introduction to the work of the Jerwood Centre and a Curator’s View of the Waterloo Exhibition
Tuesday 11 August: Wordsworth House, Cockermouth & Castlerigg Stone Circle
Built in 1690, Wordsworth House was home to the agents of successive wealthy landowners. It received a Georgian makeover, in the form of sash windows, a classical porch, fashionable new panelling and internal doors, in 1745. By 1766, when William Wordsworth’s father John moved in, it belonged to Sir James Lowther. In 1938 local people saved it from demolition and presented it to the National Trust. There will be a 20 minute Harpsichord recital. On the return journey a visit to Castlerigg – a spectacularly situated stone circle.
Wednesday 12 August: Levens Hall
This exceptional manor house, dating from the 1590s, and owned for four centuries by the Bagot family, is beautiful in itself, and has interesting collections of memorabilia of the Iron Duke and the Napoleonic Wars. The house is interesting for its oak panelling, elaborate Italian plasterwork, and stained glass. In 1688 a young French gardener, Guillaume Beaumont, a pupil of le Notre at Versailles, designed its listed garden. Levens boasts the finest, oldest and most extensive topiary garden in the world. There are over 100 pieces, each clipped to an unusual and individual design. 8
Fell Walks and Local Walks (subject to weather!) A = Boots required B = Boots strongly recommended; good all-terrain shoes required C = Walking shoes fine
Tuesday 4 August
Nab Scar, Lord Crag, Heron Pike, Fairfield (A) Nab Scar, Alcock Tarn, the Coffin Path (B/B+) Nab Scar (440 m or 1440 ft) is a short and testing climb, an This group will ascend Nab Scar with the A walk (that’s the appetiser for Heron Pike, Great Rigg and possibly Fairfield B+ bit), but part company at Lord Crag, descending to (873 m or 2,864 ft), returning the same way. Alcock Tarn and returning to Rydal via the Coffin Path. A circuit of Loughrigg Fell (C+) Rydal Cave, Loughrigg Terrace, Loughrigg Tarn and Fox Ghyll – 5 to 6 miles easy going
Wednesday 5 August: The Tilberthwaite Fells (A-)
A long scenic walk back to Rydal close to Coniston via Tilberthwaite Ghyll, the old mining area on the flanks of Wetherlam, Little Langdale, Elterwater and Red Bank. Transport back from Elterwater for those who have had enough!
Thursday 6 August
Pavey Ark and the Langdale Pikes (A)
Ascent from the New Dungeon Ghyll Hotel by Mill Ghyll to Stickle Tarn; Pavey Ark by the North Rake; traversing to Harrison Pike; descending to the Stickle Barn by the very dramatic outer path from Thorn Crag, giving glimpses of Dungeon Ghyll (with a stop to admire Dungeon Ghyll Force, scene of ‘The Two Idle Shepherd Boys’).
Saturday 8 August
The Coledale Round (A)
The ascent from Braithwaite is a testing start to a famous round which includes numerous peaks of which some are optional detours. The full menu includes Grizedale Pike, Hopegill Head, (Ladyside Pike and back), Coledale Hause, (Grasmoor and back), Crag Hill, Sail, Scar Crags & Causey Pike and / or Barrow. And of course, there’s a pub in Braithwaite:
Sunday 9 August: a circuit of Rydal Water – a C Walk to break up a Sedentary Day
Along the Rydal lakeshore to White Moss Common, and back to Rydal by the Coffin Path.
Monday 10 August – Helm Crag (A) – Transport to Grasmere for the modest ascent of Helm Crag
Tuesday 11 August: Red Screes (A) – Transport to Kirkstone Pass to climb Red Screes, visit Middle Dodd, and either walk around Scandale Head to join the path to Rydal via High Pike, Low Pike, Low Sweden Bridge or return via Fairfield.
Wednesday 12 August
Blencathra by Hall’s Fell Ridge (A)
Blencathra has numerous ascents of which that by Hall’s Fell is one of the most spectacular. It is somewhat vertiginous in places and a little slippery due to generations of boots polishing the rock. Blen-cathra means ‘High Seat’ or Throne (of the gods perhaps?), which Brythonic name was Saxonised as Saddleback. Wainwright called Blencathra ‘the grandest object in lakeland’. It dominates both Keswick and Penrith. A classic afternoon, ending up at the Horse and Farrier.