GoingToMeet

The first decade of the twenty-first century has witnessed an explosion of interest in religious texts and communities among scholars of early modern literature. While this is in part a reaction to global politics – religious politics have been in the media spotlight for the best part of the decade – the intensity of the interest also derives from more local concerns, from a professional dissatisfaction with the failure of earlier generations of historicist critics to illuminate fully the relationship between religion and literature in the early modern period.

This one- day conference aims to build on this renewed interest in early modern religion, to explore the significance of ‘regional’ religious and/or textual communities in early modern Britain and Ireland. Papers are sought which address the conference themes, although contributions will be particularly welcome which focus on any of the following: the development of sectarian identities and/or religious intolerance; the relationship between the ‘religious’ and the ‘secular’; the network of discourses surrounding religion, ethnicity and culture which emerge in the early modern period and/or their links with contemporary issues; the regional context of both canonical writers and lesser-known texts and communities; the political/ intellectual implications of critical/historical methodology.