Byron’s Don Juan: A Romantic Bicentennial Symposium
October 18-19, 2019
DePaul University
FINAL PROGRAM now available
The spirit of Romantic Bicentennials continues as we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the publication of the first cantos of Byron’s Don Juan.
Join The Byron Society of America and The Keats-Shelley Association for a symposium featuring keynote lectures by Jerome McGann, Clara Tuite, Alice Levine, and Peter Graham. Offering a unique blend of younger and established scholars, the conference converges for two days in Chicago at DePaul University and The Chicago History Museum. The conference will bring together scholars from a wide range of backgrounds––Australia, Greece, and North America––to explore the origin of Byron’s poem and its cultural value in the 21st century. At a time when free speech has become more important than ever, Byron’s Don Juan stands as a monument to the importance of literature in showing that words are things, and that writers can indeed speak truth to power.
Byron’s poem will be interpreted by poststructuralists, New Historicists, feminists, inter-disciplinary and formalist scholars, with essays offered on Lady Byron, Ada Lovelace, Rap music, Opera, and many other subjects. The conference explores Byron’s poem as a conjunction of the high and low brow, blending gossip from Regency Court trials with allusions to Homer’s Odyssey, the Ten Commandments on the one hand, and the dangers of moral self-satisfaction on the other.
Beyond the conference presentations, music will be performed on Saturday, as the conference moves to the Chicago History Museum, founded in 1856, with its rich array of Chicago lore and an Art Deco theatre. Participants will hear papers presented in a venue opposite the Art Institute of Chicago where Delacroix’s “The Combat of the Giaour and Hassan” is housed (Friday), and listen to Liszt, Chopin, and selections from Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” provided by the DePaul School of Music at the Chicago History Museum (Saturday).
No conference registration fees!
Conference begins 9am 18th October at DePaul University, Daley building, 14 East Jackson Blvd., Room 805
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