Reading Group Session: Lord Byron, 'Darkness' (1816), 26 November 2020

 'All hearts were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light': The Byronic Hero and Cultural Apocalypse: Reading Group Session

Between June and November 1816, the Romantic poet Lord Byron hired a mansion, the Villa Diodati, on the shores of Lake Geneva. 1816 became known as the ‘year without a summer’, due to the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia. Parts of Europe were cloaked with ash and debris, which transformed the environment into a sombre landscape. This natural disaster prompted a prophecy by an anonymous Italian astronomer that the world would end on 18 July, and caused widespread panic and loss of religious faith. During this turbulent summer, Byron was joined in Geneva by his physician, John William Polidori, his fellow poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Shelley’s companions Claire Clairmont and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, who was soon to be Shelley’s wife. Their stay in the villa is most remembered for the ‘ghost story competition’, in which Mary famously suffered the ‘waking dream’ that would inspire her novel Frankenstein (1818). However, it was during this period that Byron wrote one of his most haunting and apocalyptic poems: ‘Darkness’. In this poem, Byron does not merely imagine the effects of armageddon upon the Earth, but also draws striking parallels between the desolate landscape and the deterioration of the human psyche. In this reading group session, we will consider the relationship between Byron’s dark vision and the state of humanity following successive periods of political, as well as natural disasters. Can we interpret this poem as a comment upon the past horrors of the French Revolution, the present socio-economic crisis following the Napoleonic Wars, or even the future of an increasingly industrialised world? Finally, we will address whether there is any hope implicit within the empty ‘universe’ that both terrifies and captivates the Byronic speaker.

We welcome participation from staff and postgraduate students from all disciplines, institutions and historical eras, particularly those with research interests in the reciprocal relationship between commerce and culture.

For reading materials and the Zoom link, please email: northeastcommerce2019@gmail.com

North East Research Group for Commerce and Culture: First Meeting 21 January 2020

The first meeting of the North East Research Group for Commerce and Culture will take place on Tuesday 21 January 2020 between 3-5pm in Room G. 10, Ground Floor, Percy Building, Newcastle University.

The purpose of this meeting is for members to introduce themselves, and to discuss our research aims with a view to organising future reading groups, speakers' series and conferences. We are keen to frame these events around our topic of the reciprocal influence of commerce and culture across a range of disciplines and historical periods, but any additional ideas or suggestions for the purpose of our group are all very welcome.

There will, of course, be food and refreshments!

If you cannot make this initial meeting, but would like to contribute your thoughts via email, or be added to the group mailing list, please contact:
northeastcommerce2019@gmail.com.

Our group website and Twitter account are available here:
https://northeastcommerce.blogspot.com/
https://twitter.com/neccresearch

We look forward to meeting you all.

Representing the Industrial North: Call for Members

'Newcastle-on-Tyne', by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1823)

The North East of England has a strong culture of innovation in commerce, industry and trade, from its maritime heritage in seafaring stretching back to the medieval and early modern periods, to its renown as a centre for coal mining, shipbuilding and railway invention during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The North East has been home to pioneers of commercial discovery, including George and Robert Stephenson who designed the miner’s safety lamp and the first locomotives, William Armstrong who invented the hydraulic crane, and Joseph Swan who demonstrated the first electric light bulb. Not only did the region produce some of the greatest minds in engineering, trade and industry, but it also inspired a rich history of literature, art and music that both celebrated and reacted against such developments in its culture. 

In 1739, the poet and physician Mark Akenside celebrated the ‘number’s, figure’s, motion’s, laws’ that had contributed to his birthplace’s fame in his ‘Hymn to Science’. By 1775, the Newcastle radical Thomas Spence was inspired by his anger towards proposals to enclose the Town Moor to promote his ‘Land Plan’ – a call for the equalisation of property that revived the agrarian ideals of the Diggers during the English Civil War. As a centre for print culture, the Literary and Philosophical Society became a meeting place for the region’s scientists, industrialists and men of letters, but the North East was also home to some of the country’s first female engineers, such as Rachel Parsons who trained women in the factories of Wallsend during the First World War. 

With the dawn of the twenty-first century, much of the region’s industry has experienced a decline, with widespread closures of the shipyards and coalmines that compelled the writers of the North East to commemorate and scrutinise the commercial advances of their age. Yet growing scholarly interest in its recent industrial past, such as the ‘Writing the Strike’ project that focuses on poetry written by local miners during the 1980s, ensures that both the commercial culture of the North East, as well as its many representations, continues to live on.

The North East Research Group for Commerce and Culture intends to bring together scholars from across the region who are interested in the impact of commercial growth upon literature and other cultural forms, as well as the influence of literature and culture upon such developments in industry. Relevant research interests might include but are not limited to:

v  Prominent innovators in North East commerce, industry and technology.
v  Social, political or religious responses to the growth of trade in the region.
v  The portrayal of commerce in the works of Northern writers and artists.
v  Literary influences in the works of industrialists, scientists or engineers from
    the North East.
v  Responses or contributions to commercial growth in the North by minority or
    marginalised groups.
vThe impact of North East industry upon literature and the arts on a national or
    international level.

We welcome scholars from North East institutions who work more broadly upon themes of commerce or economics, and plan to arrange a first event in November 2019 to discuss our aims, scope and plans for public engagement. All disciplines and historical periods are welcome, as are postgraduates, early career researchers, and academic staff. If you would like to be added to the mailing list, or have any queries, please contact us at northeastcommerce2019@gmail.com.