Writing National Literatures

A British Academy/Oxford University Press Panel Discussion 

6.30pm – 8.00pm, followed by a drinks reception

Wednesday, 8 December 2010

Venue: The Royal Society, 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1

A panel of leading academic authors will discuss the writing of national literatures.  What is a national literature? Can writing in English represent cultural style and achievement? Can a national literature be divisive?  Can literature define nationality? Is English literature synonymous with literature? Is there such a thing as world-literature? What is the role of translation in forming national literary traditions?

Jonathan Bate, CBE, FBA, is Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at the University of Warwick. Among his many books are John Clare: A Biography, which won Britain's two oldest literary prizes, the Hawthomden and the James Tait Black. He wrote a best-selling book on Shakespeare for the general reader, The Genius of Shakespeare and a major intellectual biography of Shakespeare in the cultural context of the Elizabethan Age. His VSI English Literature will publish in Autumn 2010. He is also chief editor of The RSC Shakespeare: Complete Works, and writer of the new play with Simon Callow The Man from Stratford.

Hermione Lee, CBE, FBA is a well-known literary biographer, author of critical studies of Elizabeth Bowen, Willa Cather, and Philip Roth. She has also written major biographies of Virginia Woolf, and Edith Wharton.  From 1998 to 2008 she was the Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature and a Fellow of New College at the University of Oxford. She is now President of Wolfson College. She is author of  VSI Biography.

Elleke Boehmer is Professor in World Literature in English at the University of Oxford.  She is the author of the widely acclaimed Colonial and Postcolonial Literature, as well as three novels set in South Africa.  She has edited the British bestseller Scouting for Boys by Robert Baden-Powell. Her work includes Empire Writing, and the pioneering Indian lawyer Cornelia Sorabji's memoirs. Elleke is author of the VSI Nelson Mandela.

Nicholas Boyle, FBA, is the Schröder Professor of German and President of Magdalene College in the University of Cambridge. He was also Head of the University's Department of German from 1996 to 2001. He has so far published two volumes of his prizewinning biography, Goethe: the Poet and the Age, and a study of the cultural implications of globalization (Who Are We Now?, 1998).  His Sacred and Secular Scriptures was based on the Erasmus Lectures which he delivered at Notre Dame University.  His most recent book is  2014: How to survive the next world crisis (2010). Professor Boyle is a Fellow of the British Academy, holds an honorary degree from Georgetown University in Washington DC, and was awarded the Goethe Medal of the Goethe Institut in 2000. He is the author of German Literature: A Very Short Introduction.

Attendance is free and registration is not required for this event.  Seats will be allocated on arrival.