This panel seeks to explore the roles that women played in largely male literary circles, both as active participants and as objects in the exchange of verse and prose. Why did particular women become the focus of poetic praise and/or censure? What was to be gained from writing about them, and what were the risks’ How and why did women go about creating a space for themselves in such circles’ How did they portray themselves, and what degree of agency did they have over how they were depicted by others’ How were they dealt with and understood by their male counterparts’ And how did they go about combining their dual roles as subject and object’
Please send a 150 word abstract and a one-page C.V. (of no more than 300 words) to Judith Allan (jra501@bham.ac.uk) and Arjan van Dixhoorn (arjan.van.dixhoorn@telenet.be) by June 1.