Tuesday 29 and Wednesday 30 June, 14:00-18:00 (BST)

Bringing together literary scholars and historians from the British Isles, the Continent, and North America, this conference explores depictions of political assemblies — Diets, Estates, Parliaments, Cortes – in European historical drama. How did European historical drama use these and similar bodies to discuss notions of power, authority, and legitimacy? How far was the relationship between theatre and political assemblies conceptualised as the drama or theatre of politics? What do these history plays reveal about contemporary understandings of such institutions and their changing cultures?

DAY 1: 29 June
14:00-14:10 Welcome
14:10-15:20 Session 1: Conciliar Assemblies in the English Literary Imagination
Chair: Steven Gunn (University of Oxford)
Alex Garganigo (Austin College): “Lucianic Conciliarism”.
Alexandra Whitley (Louisiana State University): “John Heywood’s The Play of the Weather and Religious Debate in Pre-Reformation England”.
Respondent: Tracey Sowerby (University of Oxford)
15:20-15:30 Break
15:30-16:30 Session 2: Performing the Estates General during the French Wars of Religion
Chair: David Parrott (University of Oxford)
Jonathan Patterson (University of Oxford) “The Estates General of Blois (1588) as represented in Pierre Matthieu’s La Guisiade (1589)”.
Respondent: Marc Jaffre
16:30-16:40 Break
16:40-18:00 Session 3: Imagining Debate and Consultation in Early Seventeenth-Century Southern Europe
Chair: Christian Dahl (University of Copenhagen)
Enrico Zucchi (University of Padua): “Spartan Ephors or Genoese Republican Delegates? Ansaldo Cebà’s Alcippo Spartano, 1623”.
Respondent: Joris Oddens (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences)
Sofie Kluge (University of Southern Denmark): “The Play as ‘Parliament’. Debating Royal Succession in Calderón de la Barca’s Life is a Dream”.
Respondent: Jorge Díaz (Universidad Pablo de Olavide)

DAY 2: 30 June
14:00-14:30 Session 4: Writing the History of the General Assembly during the War of the Three Kingdoms
Chair: Brendan Kane (University of Connecticut)
Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin (University College Dublin): “The General Assembly of 1647 in Richard Bellings’ History of the Confederation and War in Ireland”.
Respondent: Jane Ohlmeyer (Trinity College Dublin)
14:30-14:40 Break
14:40-16:00 Session 5: Staging the English Parliament in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England
Chair: Susan Doran (University of Oxford)
Cathryn Enis (University of Birmingham): “Common Knowledge? The Bishop of Winchester and the Duke of Gloucester in the Parliament House in HVI1, Act 3.1”
David H. Zirak-Schmidt (University of Southern Denmark): “Staging the Carthaginian Senate in Massinger’s Believe as You List”.
Edward Paleit (University of London): “Parliament under Erasure in Marlowe’s Edward II”.
Respondent: Norman Jones (Utah State University)
16:00-16:10 Break
16:10-18:00 Round Table: Parliamentary Assemblies and Parliamentary Culture in European Historical Literature
Chair: Malcolm Smuts (University of Massachusetts, Boston)
Jorge Díaz (Universidad Pablo de Olavide)
Paulina Kewes (University of Oxford)
Sofie Kluge (University of Southern Denmark)
Paul Seaward (History of Parliament Trust)

This conference is a collaboration between two international research projects: ‘Histories: Assessing the Role of Aesthetics in the Historical Paradigm’ (University of Southern Denmark) and Oxford’s Fell-funded project ‘Recovering Europe’s Parliamentary Culture, 1500-1700’ earlymodern.web.ox.ac.uk/recovering-europes-parliamentary-culture-1500-1700-new-approach-representative-institutions