In the extremely unlikely event

that one or two of the people reading this are (a) living in Montreal or thereabouts and (b) free on Tuesday and Wednesday during the day and (c) interested in Shakespeare and/or the eighteenth century, do come and see my talk at this conference hosted by McGill University! Bewilderingly there seems to be absolutely no information online, not even a paltry announcement, but the location is Le Meridien Versailles and I've pasted in the program below. (This is the hotel where they're putting up the speakers and I must say I am going to think it is false advertising if someone doesn't give me a piece of very expensive chocolate while I'm there.) I'm on a flight tomorrow--that's Monday--morning, coming back Thursday, so no posts here until Thursday evening unless I finish working unexpectedly early this evening and am inspired to read a book and blog about it.

ENLIGHTENED EXCHANGES: SHAKESPEARE AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

MARCH 28TH: LE MERIDIEN VERSAILLES-MONTREAL (1808 SHERBROOKE STREET WEST)

Chair: Philip Smallwood

9:00 Michael Bristol "A System of Oeconomicall Prudence: Shakespeare and the Practice of Moral Inquiry"

10:00 Frans De Bruyn "Edmund Burke as a Political Reader of Shakespeare"

11:00 Joseph Roach "The It-Bard"

12:00-2:00 Lunch

Chair: Peter Sabor

2:00 Margreta De Grazia "The Unconscious of Shakespeare's Characters in 1800"

3:00 Gefen Bar-On "Editorial Views of Shakespeare?s Language and the Newtonian Search for Knowledge, 1723-1765"

4:00 Jenny Davidson "Inheritance and the Science of Resemblance: David Garrick Rewrites The Winters Tale"

MARCH 29TH: THOMPSON HOUSE (3650 MCTAVISH)

Chair: Geoffrey Sill

9:00 Marcus Walsh "George Steevens: A Hermeneutics and a Social Economy of Annotation"

10:00 Jean Marsden "Shakespeare and Sympathy"

11:00 Amanda Cockburn "Awful Pomp and Endless Diversity: The Sublime Sir John Falstaff"

12:00-2:00 Lunch

Chair: Linda Bree

2:00 Paul Yachnin "Sentimental History on Stage: Richard II in the Restoration and Eighteenth Century"

3:00 Marcie Frank "Romancing the Stage"

4:00 Peter Holland "Speaking Shakespeare or Hearing the Dead"

5:00 Respondent: Nick Hudson

I have never been to Montreal before, I am very much looking forward to it; and of course I get a gleam in the eye at the idea of being able to talk about eighteenth-century literature for several days with lots of people who love it as much as I do. I'm excited about all of the talks, but especially Margreta DeGrazia's; she is the author of a really wonderful essay about the idea of imprints and the wax/blank slate metaphor for the human brain that has had a very direct impact on the way I'm thinking about my current academic book project. It's slightly inaccessibly located (one of those bibliography mix-ups that makes books difficult to find in libraries sometimes, I was running around for ages before I got hold of it), but you can find the essay--really, it's fantastic, check it out--in Alternative Shakespeares, Volume 2 (NB not volume one), edited by Terence Hawkes.