CALL FOR SEMINAR PAPERS European Shakespeare Research Association conference, Universidade do Porto, Portugal
In As You Like It, Rosalind describes time for Orlando in animal terms: “Time travels in divers paces with divers persons. I’ll tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, who Time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal” (3.2. 260-262). Reaching for a metaphor that can convey the subjective experience of time, what Rosalind comes up with is what we might call “horse time,” which is measured via equine paces. Rosalind’s zoomorphic imagery is only one way in which time is described in terms of the nonhuman in Shakespeare’s works: Ferdinand’s “devouring cormorant time” (Love’s Labour’s Lost, 1.1.4) or “worm time” in Sonnet 71 when the poet goes “with vilest worms to dwell (4) join instances of “plant time” in in Macbeth, when Banquo refers to the “seeds of time” that may or may not grow in future (1.3.58-59), or in Sonnet 15’s advice that “men as plants increase” though even those without offspring can live on if “engrafted” by the poet. Heavenly bodies like the moon might dominate characters’ sense of time passing as is the case for the lovers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, while in that play the conflict between Titania and Oberon confuses the seasons, which change “their wonted liveries” (2.1.113), as if they were costumed bodies. Human time—whether abstract, or clock-driven, or expressed in human bodily change—is situated through these moments as only one version of what time can be, perhaps even as a construct that is hollow, not truly available as a thing in itself.
This seminar takes up the question of how “nature’s time,” imagined broadly as any version of temporality that is associated with nonhuman entities and phenomena, functions in the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.
What kinds of “time” are found in forests, rivers, animals, oceans, rivers, landscapes, the heavens and other aspects of the natural world?
What divergent kinds of time does nature supply and what are the consequences of each version of time for our understanding of the plays and poems, of history, of time itself?
How do personifications like bald “Father Time” or the god Chronos with his harvester’s sickle, embody or encompass natural processes, and how might they articulate with or oppose nonhuman incarnations of time?
What alternate histories about Shakespeare’s world can we tell based on “nature’s time”?
CONVENORS
Benjamin Bertram
University of Southern Maine, USA
bertram@maine.edu
Karen Raber
University of Mississippi, USA
kraber@olemiss.edu
Monika Sosnowska
University of Łódź, Poland
monika.sosnowska@uni.lodz.pl
We invite you to submit an abstract (200-300 words) and a brief biography (100-150 words) by 2 December 2024 to all convenors of the seminar in which you intend to participate.
All participants will be notified by Convenors about the acceptance of their proposals by 16 December 2024.
We are happy to entertain brief descriptions of proposed work for the seminar rather than extended or formal abstracts. You can find more on our seminar and the conference generally at https://esra2025.com
