CHATTERTON LECTURE ON POETRY

Elizabeth Melville and the poetics of desire in early modern Britain

Dr Kylie Murray

Thursday 5 May 2016, 6-7.15pm, followed by a reception
The British Academy, 10-11 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH

Chaired by: Professor Robert Crawford FBA, University of St Andrews

Elizabeth Melville, Lady Culross (c.1578-c.1640), was the first Scotswoman to see her poetry printed. This lecture situates her writing in the context of her Calvinist life and milieu, focusing particularly on the renunciation of earthly desire in her Puritanical vision, Ane Godlie Dreame (1603), and her sonnets. Ane Godlie Dreame is newly identified as the culmination of the dream-vision in Scotland, while the sonnets can be understood afresh as inflecting English love poetry towards a distinctively Scottish anti-amatory poetics. Ultimately, as her publication history also attests, Lady Culross was a poet of far greater significance than has previously been recognised.

About the speaker:
Kylie Murray is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in English at Balliol College, Oxford. She researches Scotland’s literary, intellectual, and book history, c.1100-c.1600. Her monograph, The Making of the Scottish Dream-Vision, is forthcoming with the British Academy/OUP. She also broadcasts about her research as an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker.

Image courtesy of the Photo Library, National Trust for Scotland

If you have any questions about this event please call the Events Team on 020 7969 5200 or email events@britac.ac.uk

Elizabeth Melville and the Poetics of Desire in Early Modern Britain by Kylie Murray

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