Department of English

• Wednesday, January 19, 2022 - 4:30pm to 6:00pm

Location: Zoom

Happy 2022! Our first meeting of the new year will take place on January 19th from 4:30-6:00pm via Zoom. We will be welcoming Professor Vin Nardizzi (Associate Professor of English, UBC) to discuss his paper, "Tulip Figures and Ottoman Fashions in Renaissance Art and Natural History." 

Professor Nardizzi has kindly sent a list of questions he would like you to consider as you read his paper: 

What are the pitfalls and advantages of staging research (here, a reading of some pages in an old herbal, and all that went into the making of that herbal and all that is recorded on the pages of the herbal) as if research (mine, Gerard's, de L'Obel's, and some other's) were a narrative? Do people care about a narrative about research, or only about the results? What if those results are murky, at best?

 

Whose writing should I look to as a model for translating this WIP into the form/at of the monograph?

 

How do we describe paying attention to an artefact (a flower, an image of a flower, some prose about a flower; a turban, an image of a turban, some prose about a turban) in our writing? Is the resulting description here interesting to read? Do you share my confusion, my deep interest?

 

With the exception of some usual suspects (I'm looking at Andrew Marvell and Lady Hester Pulter), where are the tulips in premodern poetry of any genre? Tell me about your favourite tulip poem and/or image!

 

How is this paper trans?

As always, you can find the paper in the Premodern Studies Library, but if you are unable to access the library with a Pennkey, please email either Jonah Greebel (jgreebel@sas.upenn.edu) or me to ask for a copy of the paper by no later than Monday, January 17th.