Tennyson and the Ancients

This seminar, held in the medieval environs of the King’s Manor in central York, will offer lectures and panel discussions on the subject of Tennyson and antiquity – medieval, classical, Celtic, British, Greek, Roman. It will think about the ancient in Tennyson’s work, as allusion, renovation, nationality, the classics, the middle ages and the Tennysonian passion of the past.

To-day? but what of yesterday? for oft
On me, when boy, there came what then I called,
Who knew no books and no philosophies,
In my boy-phrase ‘The Passion of the Past.’
The first gray streak of earliest summer-dawn,
The last long stripe of waning crimson gloom,
As if the late and early were but one—
A height, a broken grange, a grove, a flower
Had murmurs ‘Lost and gone and lost and gone!’

(The Ancient Sage)

Speakers will include:

• Chris Jones (St Andrews) on Tennyson and Anglo-Saxon poetry
• John Batchelor (Newcastle)
• Roger Ebbatson (Lancaster)
• Helen Fulton (York)
• Erik Gray (Columbia)
• Ingrid Hanson (Hull)
• Charles Martindale (York)
• Elizabeth Pender (Leeds)
• Elly McCausland (York)
• Francis O’Gorman (Leeds)
• James Williams (York)
• Jane Wright (Bristol)

Cost of day conference including refreshments and lunch will be £25 waged and £10 student rate.

The day seminar acknowledges the support of the Centre for Medieval Literature and the Tennyson Society.