BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:Europe/London
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZNAME:GMT
TZOFFSETFROM:+0100
TZOFFSETTO:+0000
DTSTART:19701025T020000
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU
END:STANDARD
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZNAME:BST
TZOFFSETFROM:+0000
TZOFFSETTO:+0100
DTSTART:19700329T010000
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU
END:DAYLIGHT
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:6a303a5f077f1
DTSTAMP:20260615T174607Z
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20220518T171500
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20220518T183000
TZID:Europe/London
SUMMARY:English Research Seminar - Dr Adam Bridgen
DESCRIPTION:This talk considers the broadening horizons of British labouring-class poetry of the 18th century, and the ways in which these engagements reflect but also notably resist their nation's concomitant commercial and colonial expansions. It takes as its focus the "thresher poet" Stephen Duck (1705-1756), one of the first and most influential poets to take advantage of a growing polite, primitivist taste for literature reflecting Britain's "native genius".    Dr Adam Bridgen will explore the presence of slavery in Duck's poetry, focusing on his early, and best known poem, The Thresher's Labour (1730), as well as his little-known narrative poem Avaro and Amanda (1736) - a version of the popular tale of Inkle and Yarico (first published in Richard Steele's Spectator 11).    Considering how an African presence emerges in The Thresher's Labour amidst Duck's description of threshing and, in parallel, how Duck's vivid portrayal of colonial slavery in Avaro and Amanda harks back to this earlier scene, Dr Bridgen makes a case for the complex cross-fertilisation of critical ideas about labour both in Britain and its colonies, and the unusual significance which slavery held for labouring-class poets like Duck.    Through a discussion of Duck's poetics, this talk will draw particular attention to the variability of literary engagements with the subject of slavery across different social classes. It is often said that Duck's move from the country to the city resulted in his stifling absorption into urbane literary culture.    The talk will end by discussing the significance of Duck within Dr Bridgen's larger book-project on this topic, and offer some reflections on how the archive of labouring-class verse can compliment current work towards more inclusive, decentered histories of abolition. https://events.st-andrews.ac.uk/events/english-research-seminar-dr-adam-bridgen/
URL:https://events.st-andrews.ac.uk/events/english-research-seminar-dr-adam-bridgen/
End:VEVENT
End:VCALENDAR