Networks of Antiquity
A two-day interdisciplinary conference.
The antiquarian networks of the eighteenth century and Romantic era contributed to a fascinating constellation of multicultural, multilingual, exchange across the globe. The study of antiquarianism was a vastly popular pastime and scholarly pursuit in Europe, especially as a way of mapping ancient world cultures, religions, and politics onto contemporary society. The circulation of knowledge within local, national, and global networks paradoxically consolidated independent national exceptionalisms, as well as contributing to a budding multicultural globalism. Texts such as James Macpherson’s Fragments of Ancient Poetry (1760) prompted a revival of vernacular traditions across the British Isles like ballad imitations and Norse translations, while the establishment of the Society of Antiquaries in Britain encouraged the circulation and study of material culture.
With the various inventive reimaginations of world mythologies, and as an oppressive vehicle for European imperial agendas, the study of vernacular antiquities during the long eighteenth century formed the critical foundations of contemporary worldviews via the lens of the past. Pre-dating Herder’s thesis about Volksgeist, these antiquarian practices already constituted a rewriting of histories, memories, and cultures, and brought to the fore questions of heritage, identity, empire, trade, as well as the value ascribed to language. Through this global trade of antiquity in all its forms—material, textual, visual—both national and local European perspectives were brought into dialogue with alternate histories and the legacy of bygone eras.
| 09:00-10:00 | Registration |
| 09:45-10:00 | Welcome and housekeeping |
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10:00-11:30 Room 4A.0.69 |
Panel 1.1. The Imaginative Transports of Antiquarian Fieldwork Thomas Gray’s Travelling Tables: Antiquarian Fieldwork in The Naturalist’s Journal Conjectural Knowledge, Empiricism, and the Romance of British Antiquity Fieldwork by Correspondence: Collaborative Authorship in A Catalogue of the Antiquities, Houses, Parks, Plantations, Scenes, and Situations in England and Wales |
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10:00 -11:30 Room 4A.0.68 |
Panel 1.2. British Antiquity & Anglo-Nordic Networks How a Danish Ballad Ended Up in Wuthering Heights Icelandic Antiquities in Romantic-Era British Social Networks Scoto-Nordic Networks Surrounding Robert Jamieson |
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11:30–13:00 Room 4A.0.69 |
Panel 2.1. Material Cultures & Antiquarian (Re-)construction Wooden Carvings, Branching Networks: The Antiquarian Acquisitions of the ‘Ladies of Llangollen’ Construction of a Nordic Antiquity in the Catalogue of Árni Magnusson’s Library Reconstructing Early Medieval Spectacle on the London Stage |
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11:30–13:00 Room 4A.0.68 |
Panel 2.2. Antiquarian Education & Knowledge Production Colonizing through the Classics: Antiquarian Networks, Classical Education, and Imperial Knowledge in Greek and Canadian Universities, 1824–1867 How the Tradition of Anglo-classical Education in England built British Literary Taste, Shaped National Identity, and Made a love of Antiquity Inevitable Linnaeus and the Antiquarian Spirit |
| 13:00–14:00 | Lunch |
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14:00–15:30 Room 4A.0.69 |
Panel 3.1. Textual Networks & Antiquarian Lineages Setting the Stage for Sagas: Þormóður Torfason and the Negotiation of Saxo’s Authority Bede, the Scotti, and the Early Medieval Irish in John Lingard’s Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church (1806) Sir William Jones’s Revival of the Pre-Islamic Poems “Moallakat” |
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14:00–15:30 Room 4A.0.68 |
Panel 3.2. The Productions of Antiquity: Local, National, Global Richard Gough in Wales and the Intellectual Production of Eighteenth-century Antiquarian Travel Writing Gaston de Blondeville (1826), Ideas of Nation, and Illustration The Kraken’s Antiquarian Legacy in Britain |
| 15:30–16:00 |
Coffee and comfort break |
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16:00–17:15 Room 4A.0.69 |
Keynote 01: Archipelagic Antiquities: Mapping the Northern Imagination from the 1760s |
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10:00–10:00 Room 4A.0.69 |
Registration |
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10:30–12:00 Room 4A.0.69 |
Panel 4.1. Circuits of Antiquarian Correspondence in/from the Middle East “To reconcile observation with history”: Claudius Rich and James Rennell on Herodotus and the Ruins of Babylon Orientalist Literary Networks in Scottish Print Culture, 1790–1820 “That Dangerous Thing a Female Wit”: Hester Stanhope’s Hidden Antiquarianism |
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10:30–12:00 Room 4A.0.68 |
Panel 4.2. Anti-Antiquarianism & Collecting Folklore Reconnecting with the Past: Romantic Anti-Antiquarianism The Flame of Imagination: Dealing with Disappointed Antiquarian Expectations in Icelandic Folklore Collections Nationalism and Transnationalism: Motivations Behind the Collecting of ‘Folk Songs’ in Early Nineteenth-century Europe |
| 12:00-13:00 | Lunch |
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13:00–14:30 Room 4A.0.69 |
Panel 5.1. Aesthetic Networks of Antiquity Antiquarianism and Glories of the Past: Visual Representations of Vikings in Denmark (1808–1842) Friedrich David Gräter between Germany and Denmark: His Influence on the Aesthetic Reception of Norse Mythology Ancient Forms, Renewed: Edinburgh’s Trustees’ Academy, Cast Study, and David Scott’s Romanticised Antiquity |
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13:00–14:30 Room 4A.0.68 |
Panel 5.2. The Global Networks of Political Antiquarianism The Circles of Antiquarian Hispanism in the Edinburgh Review, 1803–1824 “De enkelte Lysglimt, Österlandenes Skribentere kunde lade falde I vor tidligere Histories Mörke”: Arabic and Persian Sources for the Viking Age as a Tool for Shaping Danish Antiquarian Knowledge and Identity, 1814–1825 The “Viking Metaphor” in the Pacific |
| 14:30-15:00 | Coffee and comfort break |
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15:00–16:15 Room 4A.0.69 |
KEYNOTE 02. “Horrid pictures of war and desolation’: Networks of Dissent, Northern Antiquities, and the Liberal Imagination in Britain, 1770–1810 Speaker: Prof. Jon Mee |
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16:15–16:30 Room 4A.0.69 |
Closing remarks |
Registration
Please register for the conference here.
Funding
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