“Adaptation and Appropriation”
8th International Conference of the Tudor Symposium
Northumbria University
3-4 July, 2013

Confirmed Speakers: Adam Hansen (Northumbria University), Mike Pincombe (Newcastle University), Cathy Shrank (University of Sheffield)

How do adaptations fit texts to new cultural circumstances? What gains or losses are involved in transformations from page to stage or screen? What are the politics of appropriating the past? Do adaptations encourage creativity or suppress it? What is the role of publishers, readers, and the state in promoting or restricting appropriations of the classics? These questions are as relevant today as they were 500 years ago. Adaptations of Shakespeare and his contemporaries and appropriations of the Tudor past are a major feature of our culture, but Tudor literature was equally characterised by a vigorous appropriation of its classical and medieval pasts. Yet, questions of adaptation and appropriation in Tudor England and in our own time (and in the many periods in between) continue to be studied separately in disciplines with their own scholarly traditions and theories. This conference aims to bring together scholars working in a variety of fields to encourage dialogue between different perspectives and methodologies.

We invite proposals for papers that consider any aspects of the appropriation of past cultures and texts in Tudor England (1485-1603) and of Tudor texts and culture from the sixteenth century to the present in all media. This might include the techniques and processes of literary adaptation; the political uses of texts from history; the appropriation of the prestige of Tudor literature and culture in novels, on television, and in musical lyrics; literary tradition and originality; parody and spoofs; the representation of the Tudors in contemporary novels and television drama; changing ideas about plagiarism, fidelity, and originality; the role of patronage and the publishing and film industries in shaping attitudes towards the past; questions of literary value and canon formation; censorship and the involvement of the state in the representation and reproduction of the past. We particularly welcome papers that reflect on the processes of adaptation and appropriation and different methodologies.

Topics might include (but are not limited to):

• The imitation and reception of ancient Greek and Roman literature in Tudor England
• Tudor translations
• Staging the classical, medieval, and Tudor past in Elizabethan England
• The publication and transformation of medieval literature in sixteenth-century England
• Tudor plays in performance from the death of Elizabeth to the present
• Cinema, television, opera, pop music, and other versions of Tudor texts
• The publication, editing, and re-interpretation of Tudor literature after 1603
• The appropriation of the Tudor past in historical novels, plays, and television series, foreign-language translations of Tudor texts critical models of adaptation, appropriation, imitation, reception, cultural memory, the canon, presentism

Please send proposals (100 words) by 22 March 2013 to Fred Schurink (fred.schurink@northumbria.ac.uk) or Monika Smialkowska (monika.smialkowska@northumbria.ac.uk).