Festival of History: Literary Lincoln: The Early Modern to the 19th Century

Literary Lincoln: The Early Modern to the 19th Century, Wednesday 30 April – Lincoln Guildhall 

Join us at the Guildhall to explore the literary references of Lincolnshire with this trio lecture, in celebration of the Lincoln Festival of History:

• Dr Christopher Marlow – ‘A Very Infamous and Libellous Stage Play’: Dramatic Misrule in Seventeenth-Century Lincolnshire’

Christopher will consider records relating to the lost satirical play ‘The Death of the Lord of Kyme’ (1601), which brought to a head a bitter dispute between Henry Clinton, the Earl of Lincoln, and his nephew Sir Edward Dymoke. The play was preceded by an incident of public unrest in which retainers to the Dymoke family brandished homemade military paraphernalia and ‘did marche on horseback two and two together through the streets’ of Coningsby. By considering the relationship between dramatic satire and mock militarism, as well as paying attention to the way that these incidents have been interpreted by critics, he will reveal the complex relationship between civil unrest and literary invention in seventeenth-century Lincolnshire.

• Dr Laura Gill – ‘Flooded Lincolnshire Landscapes and the Victorian Literature of Childhood’

This talk discusses two Victorian ‘flood novels’: George Eliot’s well-known The Mill on the Floss (1860), and Harriet Martineau’s children’s book The Settlers at Home (1841). Eliot’s fictional town of St. Oggs is widely thought to be based on Gainsborough, Lincolnshire; Martineau’s historical fiction is set in the early modern Isle of Axholme, during a period of drainage and civil war. In this talk, Laura will first explore how Victorian storytellers relate the landscapes of Lincolnshire to the diluvial culture of the Netherlands. Second, she will discuss the significance of the child in these novels: both look at the watery landscapes of Lincolnshire from the perspective of children.

• Dr Owen Clayton – ‘Tennyson, Federalism, and Empire’

Alfed Lord Tennyson worried a lot about Empire. As Poet Laureate and a proud Brit, he was concerned that the British Empire might one day lose its dominant global position. These worries led him to spend a lot of time thinking about Britain’s political rivals, such as France. But the country that worried him the most was the United States of America. In the USA, Tennyson saw a potential successor to the Anglo-Saxon British Empire, but in its federal political system he also saw a way that Great Britain might fashion itself into a ‘Greater Britain’, one that included seats in Parliament for faraway colonies such as Australia. This talk will examine Tennyson’s worries about Empire, his thoughts about Federalism, and how this all manifested in his poetry.

To find out more and book your free tickets, visit: https://literarylincoln.eventbrite.co.uk.