Literature and Children

Please join us for the fifth seminar of the academic year:

Literature and Children:

Poetry for Play Hours: 

Victorian Poets & the Culture of Children's Verse

Professor Kirstie Blair 

University of Stirling

***

Wednesday, 23rd January 2013

5:30 – 7:00 pm

Department of English Studies, Hallgarth House Seminar Room

***

Speaker: Professor Kirstie Blair, Stirling University

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Professor Kirstie Blair has just moved to a Chair at the University of Stirling, after working for seven years at the University of Glasgow. She has also recently been employed as a visiting professor by the Armstrong Browning Library in Texas. Professor Blair is the author of two monographs on Victorian poetry, "Form and Faith in Victorian Poetry and Religion", which came out in 2012, and "Victorian Poetry and the Culture of the Heart". She has published a variety of articles and book chapters on Victorian literature, particularly in the fields of poetry and poetics, literature and religion, and literature and medicine. 

ABSTRACT

This talk provides an introduction to the new project I am starting, which will consider transatlantic poetry for children in the Victorian period, with particular focus on the involvement of major ‘canonical’ poets – primarily Tennyson, Browning and Longfellow – in writing for a child audience and participating in the emerging publishing culture of children’s literature. I will consider some of the possible directions that this research might take and highlight the peculiar investments of major Victorian writers in poetry for children. The talk concludes with a more in-depth consideration of Tennyson, and a reading of ‘The Brook’, in terms of its ambiguous status as a ‘children’s’ poem.

For more information, find us on facebook, follow us on Twitter (@inventionsSem) or check our blog: inventionsofthetext.blogspot.com