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UNIVERSITY OF EXETER
It is intended to hold a three-day colloquium on the above topic (see below for more ample details) at the University of Exeter in April 1999. It will provide an opportunity to discuss more fully issues raised by the celebrations surrounding the quatercentenary of the Edict of Nantes. The organisers (Mark Greengrass, Sheffield; Penny Roberts, Warwick; and Keith Cameron, Exeter) invite you to submit abstracts of papers for consideration as soon as possible.
This colloquium is to be held in the year which follows the 400th anniversary of the pacification at Nantes in 1598 which brought the French 'wars of religion' to a close. It cannot be termed however, a conventional 'commemorative' conference (as the date suggests), for there are many, lavishly conceived conferences of this king currently being planned for 1998 in France. Simple commemoration is not a sufficient reason for studying a historical and cultural event. A significant historical - and cultural - problem (and one that is currently exercising the minds of historians and literary historians) is, however, worth defining and studying collectively. This is planned as a working colloquium where theatmosphere will be convivial and informal. It will aim to publish subsequently a volume of studies.
The 'problem' is one that has been created by strong historiographical traditions. On the one hand, there is a residual and powerful protestant, confessional tradition that interprets the Edict of Nantes as one of the defining moments in its history. The pacification was the moment when legitimate protestant rights of identity were recognised. At the same time, the edict contained within it the seeds of the later, and inevitable, betrayal and revocation. Bourbon and royalist traditions interpret the edict as a triumphal 'politique' act that enabled the absolute monarchy to reunite France at a critical moment and lay the foundations for the consolidation of the French state in the seventeenth century. The difficulty with these traditions is that they rely for their interpretative weight upon a retrospective writing of the past. Our problem is to recreate the sense of 'adventure' into the unknown that was associated with the edicts of pacification. How was it that the largest and most coherent monarchy in Europe could possibly contemplate the acceptance and integration of a substantial religious minority into the realm? It would have been much easier to have attempted the kind of religious pluralism afforded by the German Reich after 1555, or later in the Netherlands, where religious diversity was eventually secured by degrees of political separation. Integrative pluralism of the kind attempted by the French state was a much more ambitious adventure altogether.
The fact that the French state embarked upon such an adventure leads us to ask complementary questions about the nature of that state as well as early-modern French society and its cultural life. How were the edicts of pacification enforced in practical terms? We know that everything in sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Europe was mediated and 'brokered'. How did this process work for the edicts of pacification? Were there greater degrees of pluralism in its intellectual life than we have previously imagined? What comparisons can be drawn between the privileges granted to other groups in society and those granted to the Huguenots? Can regional or local examples tell us more about the practical degrees of toleration that existed and upon which the edicts of pacification built? Can cultural and literary historians explain more clearly for us how the conservative legal traditions of France managed to justify to themselves and others this extraordinary adventure into what must have seemed like dangerous plurality?
The sessions at the colloquium will depend to some degree on the papers that we secure. We shall invite participants to prepare outline synopses of papers of about 6,000 words in length which they will be asked to summarise in 20 minute presentations. Each session of two or three such papers will have a commentator who will have read the papers in their entirety and prepare a commentary on them to focus our discussion. Those who are interested in participating are also invited to submit synopses independently for consideration by the conference organisers. There may be limited funds available to defray the costs of post-graduate or post-doctoral students. The draft programme will be available in September 1998. The final programme will be circulated in January 1999.
Accommodation will be provided in the recently built Post-Graduate Centre situated on the main campus of Exeter University.
If you are interested in attending please complete and return the reservation slip. Invoices will be issued on 1 December 1998 and, for administrative reasons, we expect payment by 15 January 1999. If you wish to pay in advance of this date you may do so making your cheque/money order payable to the University of Exeter.
The Adventure of Religious Pluralism in Early-Modern France
April 19-21 1999
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I wish to attend the The Adventure of Religious Pluralism in Early-Modern France Colloquium on April 19-21 1999
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Total cost for full board and conference fee =A3130 (pounds sterling)
Total cost for meals only and conference fee =A385 (pounds sterling)
Please return to:
Keith Cameron, Queen's Building, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4QH.
Tel: (0)1392 264221 FAX: (0)1392 264222 E/mail: K.C.Cameron@exeter.ac.uk
Keith Cameron
Professor of French and Renaissance Studies and Dean of the Faculty of Arts,
Editor of:
- Computer Assisted Language Learning,
(http://www.swets.nl/sps/journals/call.html);
- Exeter Textes litteraires, (http://www.ex.ac.uk/uep/french.htm);
- Exeter Tapes, (http://www.ex.ac.uk/french/staff/cameron/ExTapes.html);
- EUROPA-on line & European Studies Series,
(http://www.intellect-net.com/europa/index.htm);
- Elm Bank Modern Language Series, (http://www.intellect-net.com/elm-bank)
Department of French, Queen's Building, The University,
EXETER, EX4 4QH,
G.B.
WWW (http://www.ex.ac.uk/french/)
Tel: 01392 264221 / + 44 1392 264221;
Fax: 01392 264222 / + 44 (19) 1392 264222
E/mail: K.C.Cameron@ex.ac.uk
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