Cervantes and Quixote in England, by Nathanael Brandt
The History of Cardenio: Spain and England, Then and Now
Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis
April 27, 2012
Keynote Speaker: Gary Taylor, George Matthew Edgar Professor of English at Florida State University
Despite its status as a collaborative play based on an episode in Don Quixote, much of the scholarly work on William Shakespeare and John Fletcher’s “lost” 1612 play, The History of Cardenio, has largely focused on Cardenio’s status as a work by Shakespeare alone, with Cervantes’ and Fletcher’s contributions to the text treated as incidental. Fortunately, recent work on the play has begun to redirect attention away from Shakespeare and towards Cardenio’s historical and literary contexts. Such recent scholarship will be presented at a colloquium of renowned Cervantes, Fletcher and Shakespeare scholars that will be held in Indianapolis on April 28, 2012. Confirmed participants include Roger Chartier, Barbara Fuchs, Joe Cacaci, Chris Marino, Suzanne Gossett, Joyce Boro, Vimala Pasupathi, Douglas Lanier, Eduardo Olid Guerrero, Adam Hooks, Christopher Hicklin, Huw Griffiths, and Regina Buccola.
To complement this colloquium of senior scholars, “The History of Cardenio: Spain and England, Then and Now” graduate colloquium similarly seeks 15-minute papers that broaden current understanding of early modern Anglo-Spanish relations, especially the relationship between Cervantes and English drama, in order to better contextualize Cardenio within the early modern imaginary. Also welcomed are papers that engage with issues of collaboration (particularly those considering the relationship between Fletcher and Shakespeare), adaptation (particularly those considering Lewis Theobald’s Double Falsehood), and performance-based research. Participants in the graduate colloquium on April 27 are encouraged to stay for the April 28 colloquium of senior scholars, several of whom will be available to chair panels in the graduate sessions. Conference participants who arrive on early will be able to attend a free pre-performance lecture by Professor Ayanna Thompson on “Shakespeare and Race” on April 26.
Both the senior and graduate colloquia take place in conjunction with the premiere of a fullscale production of “The History of Cardenio”, a version of Shakespeare and Fletcher’s play directed by Terri Bourus, an Equity actor and one of the three General Editors of the New Oxford Shakespeare. The text of Cardenio has been reconstructed and re-imagined by Gary Taylor, General Editor of the Oxford Shakespeare and the Oxford Middleton, and co-editor of Fletcher’s The Tamer Tamed, or The Woman’s Prize. The production is taking place April 19-28 in Indianapolis, home to a Spanish-speaking population of over 200,000 people. “The History of Cardenio” celebrates the grand opening of a new, state-of-the-art, 248-seat, $2.5 million theatre at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), a campus which has recently been hailed as one of the top five up- and-coming American universities.
More information about the production is available here.
Abstracts of no less than 300 words, submitted in a .doc or .pdf format, along with a 50 word bio, should be sent to Dr. Francis Connor at fconnor |at| iupui.edu. Review of abstracts begins immediately; no abstracts will be considered after March 15, 2012.
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