Manchester Metropolitan University interdisciplinary one-day

symposium: Cultural exchanges in the 18th Century

Geoffrey Manton (10am-4pm, room to be confirmed), April 16th 2018

Organisers: Jonathan Spangler (ManMet) & Jeremy Filet (ManMet & Universite de Lorraine,
France)

The aim of this one-day symposium is to bring together academics working in different
fields of research, from history to literature and from music to any forms of art. The chosen
theme is cultural exchanges in the early 18th Century, and our guest speaker is Professor Pierre
Degott from the University of Lorraine, who has proposed to explore with us connections
between Jacobitism and literature in works like Tom Jones or Pamela.

Recently, Frédéric Ogée and Lise Andries have broadly addressed the topic of cultural
transfers between the British Isles and the continent. From the beginning of the long 18th
century, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes triggered the exile of the Huguenots. This
Protestant diaspora fled France and some of its members settled within the British Isles. Those
people brought cultural artefacts with them, and therefore triggered cultural transfers, mostly
from the Continent to the British Isles. At the same time, the development of intellectual and
educational travelling, also known as the Grand Tour, initiated an intellectual melting-pot in
European courts. Jeremy Black has thoroughly studied the voyages of British travellers on the
continent and Jean Viviès has proposed various literary studies of their travel narratives.

Nevertheless, within this framework, little is known about the cultural exchanges that
were sparkled by the 1688 “Glorious” Revolution. In its aftermath, Jacobites fled the British
Isles for the continent, created a new wave of migration, and therefore exchanges of ideas. The
military fate of James II’s army in France has been studied by Nathalie Genet-Rouffiac and
Patrick Clarke de Dromantin, and Daniel Szechi and Eamon O’Ciardha have addressed the
issue of Jacobitism within the British Isles. Nevertheless, while Murray Pittock and Neil
Guthrie defined a material culture of Jacobitism, little is known about the literary, musical or
artistic transfers, which occurred, outside of the Jacobite shadow court at St-Germain itself,
famously studied by Edward Corp. Therefore, one might want to study the representations of
Jacobitism in cultural productions of the 18th Century, and/or the cultural transfers produced
by the circulation of the Jacobites in Europe. Papers are invited from academics, researchers
and postgraduates to attend papers on topics related to this theme in its broadest sense, cultural
transfers between the British Isles and the Continent (as connected to Jacobitism, or of a
different sort), and in particular, the interplay between text, music and art.
Pierre Degott:
Pierre Degott is Professor of English at the “Université de Lorraine” in Metz, where he
mainly teaches eighteenth-century literature. His PhD. (now published at Éditions
L’Harmattan) was a study on the themes and poetics of Handel’s libretti for his English
oratorios. His current research is on the following subjects: 1. Librettology, and more
specifically the reflexivity of the sung text; 2. the representation of musical and operatic
performances in Anglo-Saxon fiction; 3. opera and oratorio in transfers. Even though his
research covers all eras concerned by operatic practise, he mainly concentrates on eighteenth-
century musical forms (opera, semi-opera, oratorio, odes, ballad-opera, musical plays…). He
has published about 100 academic articles and organised several conferences, mainly on
musico-literary subjects. He is currently the Dean of the “UFR Arts, Lettres et Langues” in
Metz.

Confirmed speakers include:

• Pr. Daniel Szechi (Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Manchester)

• Dr. Amanda Babington (Musicologist at the Royal Northern College of Music, and
specialist of historically informed performance)
• Jon Stobart (Professor of social and economic History at Manchester Metropolitan
University), An English tour in context: taste, knowledge and aesthetics in Sophia
Newdigate’s travel journal, 1748.
• Dr Noelle Dückmann Gallagher (Lecturer in Restoration and eighteenth-century
British art & literature at the University of Manchester) What's French about the
French Pox: Jacobitism, Anti-French sentiment, and Venereal Disease in Eighteenth-
Century British Literature and Art.
• Dr Kristof Fatsar (Senior Lecturer in Landscape Architecture at Writtle University
College)
• Dr. Amanda Babington (Musicologist at the Royal Northern College of Music, and
specialist of historically informed performance)
• Jon Stobart (Professor of social and economic History at Manchester Metropolitan
University), An English tour in context: taste, knowledge and aesthetics in Sophia
Newdigate’s travel journal, 1748.
• Dr Noelle Dückmann Gallagher (Lecturer in Restoration and eighteenth-century
British art & literature at the University of Manchester)
• Dr Jonathan Spangler (Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at Manchester
Metropolitan University)
• Monika Renate (Letters 1916-1923 Project Manager, Centre for Digital Humanities,
Maynooth University), On the edge of Europe? – continental perceptions of Irish
politics in the early modern period.

N.B: Please note that coffee and cakes will be available for the participants. For this reason,
could you please confirm your participation via Everbrite (free ticket) in order for us to plan
accordingly.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/edit?eid=43127584767