This event will be held in English.
Organized by the Institute for Ideas and Imagination. Co-sponsored by Columbia Global Center Paris.
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When England’s writers finally joined the Eurasian project of classical revival now known as the Renaissance, they were, to their frequently voiced embarrassment, some two hundred years behind the curve. How did this small island, isolated from the cultural and commercial centers of the Mediterranean world, establish a meaningful claim to antiquity’s inheritance?
Focusing on mid-sixteenth century translations of Virgil’s Aeneid as well as Christopher Marlowe’s dramatic adaptation of the epic, Dido, Queen of Carthage, this talk will suggest that the very tenuousness of Renaissance England’s connection to the classical world rendered all the more urgent its thinking about the ties that bind groups of people together across time and space. In England’s belated Renaissance, in other words, we can discern the contours of the fiction that we now understand as race.
Lauren Robertson is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where she works on early modern literature and culture. She is the author of Entertaining Uncertainty in the Early Modern Theater: Stage Spectacle and Audience Response (Cambridge 2023), and her articles appear in Shakespeare Studies, Renaissance Drama, Shakespeare Quarterly, English Literary Renaissance, and Theatre Journal.
The Rendez-Vous de l’Institut Series is generously supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. You will find a full calendar of the Fellows’ Talks.
Venue
Nestled in the Montparnasse district, Reid Hall hosts several Columbia University initiatives: Columbia Global Center Paris, the Institute for Ideas and Imagination, Columbia Undergraduate Programs, M.A. in History and Literature, and the GSAPP Shape of Two Cities Program. This unique combination of resources is enhanced by our global network whose mission is to expand the University's engagement the world over through educational programs, research initiatives, regional partnerships, and public events.
The views and opinions expressed by speakers and guests do not necessarily reflect the official policies or positions of Columbia Global Center Paris or its affiliates.
